Manufacturing planner agents in network enterprises
by Lanfranco Imberti
International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management (IJATM), Vol. 3, No. 3/4, 2003

Abstract: The negotiation phase between the customer and the supplier in network enterprises operating in the automotive industry in the field of chip removal is a critical activity for the suppliers. Indeed the suppliers, in order to anticipate their competitors, need to propose in a very short time a reliable evaluation of time and costs related to the production of the parts required by the potential customer. Since the capability to provide this kind of evaluation in a short time gives competitive advantage to enterprises, in order to support the supplier during this phase, a manufacturing planner agent is under development, within the project ''Distributed process and production planning in manufacturing enterprise networks''. The target is to automatically create non-linear working plans mapping all the operations on the machines constituting the system, where ''non-linear'' means that alternative sequences and alternative operations are considered. Since the agent is part of a system based on a distributed architecture, it is extremely important to use an effective standard concerning data treatment. This topic will also be addressed in the paper.

Online publication date: Mon, 10-May-2004

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management (IJATM):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com