Systems Modeling for Virtual Enterprise Configuration

Many factors associated with industrial growth, such as continual development of technology, market globalization and customization increasingly spur companies towards inter-enterprise cooperation. Efficient cooperation and closer customer interface supported by system integration throughout the whole product lifecycle is becoming very important. The concept of virtual organization appears to be a progressive form for industrial networks, mainly for small and medium sized enterprises. Up to now however there exists in practice no implementation which is in complete conformity with the principles of virtual organization The precondition for further advancement is an integrating infrastructure composed of proper supporting systems. The key issue of the research presented in the paper is how to set up an optimal consortium for any specific demand or product desired by customer. This evolves in a software system design and development to automate the process of configuration of the manufacturing system. The output system data should define main customer requirements for the product’s manufacturability, manufacturing costs and delivery times, plus the optimal manufacturing consortium structure. This kind of functionality has been analyzed with the purpose to determine the set of initial system requirements. A new way of modelling within the analyses is discussed, and results are presented in the form of UML diagrams. Decision procedures regarding the major influence of the product on the organization’s structure and the way of knowledge processing are based on a data sequence as follows: 1. Product, 2. Technological process, 3. Manufacturing system, 4. Virtual enterprise. Flexibility and reconfigurability at a higher level of abstraction is considered more than a detailed design. The list of requirements is necessary to maintain the construction of a collaborative web-environment which as provisionally entitled the VEConfig System.