Dynamic manufacturing network, PLM hub and business standards testbed

Abstract

Current trends in manufacturing enterprises dealing with complex systems are usage of System Engineering, Product Life Cycle management and systematic utilization of computer aided solutions for all engineering or management activities. In such a context, sustainable and agile infrastructure for emerging digital ecosystems is required, based on open eBusiness PLM standards supporting exchange, sharing and long term archiving of digital models describing behavioural products and implied organizations. This paper will present some new ways to deal with interoperability in such a context, based on Dynamic Manufacturing Networks, constituted by a network of partner enterprises, of enterprise applications involved in the cross-organizational collaboration processes and of the underlying ICT systems. The approach will consist in qualifying such a network to support a portfolio of cross organizational processes supported by a PLM Hub, in particular in terms of interoperabilty and in terms of security, and to map it with available capabilities used by the actual collaboration participants. Then it will be possible to define the efforts required by the partners in order to be able to participate to a given kind of collaboration, making then it possible to participate in any other future collaboration where the partner will play the same role. Doing so, interoperabilty can be established in a continuous and smooth way, allowing all the digital business ecosystem community to build together their interoperability maturity. This approach is completed by the ellaboration of an associated testbed for eBusiness PLM standards allowing the community to accelerate development of required standards as well as their implementation, being by software product solutions or by industrial processes and methods. The principles will be exposed, as well as illustrations coming from research projects such as IMAGINE or IRT-SystemX SIP projects.