Abstract
Information flow up and down the supply chain, particularly for complex products such as automobiles, aircraft, and weapons systems is complex, difficult, fraught with errors and time consuming. In the defense business, for example, just the engineering trade-off process in the conceptual design phase can take up to a year before all the information requested is available for the design engineering team to compare alternatives (Schwart97). Some of the problems encountered include the inability of small suppliers far down the chain to access technical data created with CAD systems to which they do not have access, inaccurate or wrong versions of technical data when the supplier eventually obtains it, and difficulty in contacting people to request clarification. EDI and geometric modeling standards (e.g. STEP) and Email have started to address these problems, but they do not address all of them. Email, for instance often results in huge CAD files bogging down a suppliers email system (often using a dial up modem) only to have it discarded because it was not appropriate to their business. EDI/EC and STEP standards focus on standards for the exchange and sharing of data, not on their smooth and efficient movement up and down the chain.
A new approach is proposed which has the potential to eliminate or minimize many of these problems. Based on the Systems Integration Architecture described elsewhere (Mills95aa, Mi11s96), it uses the concepts of Distributed Object computing, remote computing, Internet access, X-Windows, references and associations to facilitate (a) access to remote applications and data and (b) the flow of information up and down the supply chain. Details of SIA and an application of it, called AeroWEB, to the problems described above are presented.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Schwartzkopf, B., Lockheed Martin Vought Systems, Private Communication, April, 1997.
Mills, J. J., An Agile Information Infrastructure: Integration Issues and Approaches, the Proceedings of the Fifth National Agility Conference, Boston, March 5–7, The Agility Forum,p.p. 267–276, 1995.
Mills, J. J., A Basis Model for Agile Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on CIM, Singapore, July 9–14, Published by World Scientific Publ., Singapore, Vol. 3,p.p. 53–63, 1995.
Mills, J. J. and Brand, M., The System Integration Architecture: A Framework for Extended Enterprise Information Systems, the Proceedings of the Second International IFIP Working Conference on Design of Information Infrastructure Systems for Manufacturing, Eindhoven, 1996, Publ. by Chapman Hall,p.p. 144–168, 1997.
Goldman, S., Nagel, R.N., and Preiss, K., Agile Competitors and Virtual Organizations, Publ. By Van Norstrand Reinhold, New York, 1995.
Hardt, D., Patterson, R, and Neal, R, “Next Generation Manufacturing, A Framework for Action: Executive Summary,” published by The Agility Forum, Leaders for anufacturing, and Technologies Enabling Manufacturing, January 31, 1997.
William Adams, President of Agile Web, Bethlehem, PA, USA, personal communication, January 1998.
Anon, The Common Object Request Broker: Architecture and Specification, Revision 2.2, Publ By the Object Management Group, February 1998; available at URL -http://http://www.omg.org/corba/corbiiop.htm.
Senehi, M.K., Wallace, S, Barkemeyer, M.E., Ray, S.R. and Wallace, E.K, E.K., “Manufacturing Systems Integration Initial Architecture Document, NIST Interagency Report 91–4682, September, 1991.
M. Chen and R.J. Norman, “A Framework For Integrated CASE,” IEEE Software, March 1993.
Larry Johnson, Raytheon TI Systems, Personal Communication, Summer, 1996.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mills, J.J., Brand, M., Elmasri, R. (1999). AeroWEB: An information infrastructure for the supply chain. In: Mills, J.J., Kimura, F. (eds) Information Infrastructure Systems for Manufacturing II. DIISM 1998. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 16. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35385-2_22
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35385-2_22
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-5477-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-35385-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive