Towards co-creation and co-production in production chains modeled in DEMO with REA support

Abstract

Co-creation and Co-production in production chains is the typical way of cooperation one observes in high value industrial production chains. The enterprises in these production chains constitute together also a sophisticated virtual enterprise. While many professional IT systems are operational within these enterprises, there are only IT technologies with a limited scope at a small scale available between these enterprises. The new technologies currently provided by enterprise engineering promise substantial operational improvements; operational control, compliance to business rules, optimization of efficiency and effectiveness. Another objective is support for the REA ontology for high quality financial information systems, which requires a conceptual mapping between REA and DEMO to be found. The first step, a generic DEMO model for co-creation and co-production, has been devised and subjected to early validation. This paper is also a positioning paper, defining future research, specifies two challenges for the DEMO theory and provides foundations for a professional production system.