A Model for Collaborative Process Planning in a Engineering and Production Network

Improvements in the agility of manufacturing systems in SMEs have promoted the emergence of collaborative engineering and production networks in which the partner companies cooperate to reach a shared objective. To date, much work has been undertaken to develop models and tools that facilitate hierarchical collaboration using concurrent engineering practices. In this paper a horizontal cooperation in process planning and among partners of a one-of-a-kind production (OKP) virtual enterprise is proposed. The Collaborative Process Planning (co-Planning) model enables the different participants to cooperate in three phases: Aggregate, Supervisor and Operational Planning. The result of co-Planning is a *onlinear Machining-Inspection Integrated Process Plan, which is obtained from a product model based on machining and inspection features. The co-Planning process is based on a representation supported by an integrated product-process-resource ontology. In order to establish the requirements of this ontology, this work provides the architecture, based on web services for an IT system to support the co-Planning process.