e-Traceability: traceability for collaborative spread CAD-CAM-CNC manufacturing chains

On complex and flexible industrial collaboration environments, manufacturing traceability has to move from a traditional internal enterprise activity-based view to a collaborative and distributed one. The objective is to implement global traceability: traceability of the whole manufacturing process when performed by several partner companies (extended enterprise). The paper proposes a model to support e-traceability in CADCAM collaborative chains to assure that traceability data will be understandable and available whenever required, no matter the product or the manufacturing process complexity. The model tries to automate as much as possible traceability activities by defining an explicit link between the traceability data and the product structure defined in ISO STEP standard. This model provides data significance and drives the data transfer through industrial partners along the supply chain. Key-Words: Traceability, Extended Enterprise, Data Management, Quality Control, CAD/CAM, STEP. 1 Traceability and Collaborative Manufacturing: e-traceability 1.1 Traceability Definition. Traceability can be defined as the set of practices that can be adopted by any production sector to make available all essential information about a product [1], or as defined in ISO 9000/2000 quality procedures: “as the ability to trace the history, application or location of an entity by means of recorded identifications” [2]. The objective of “manufacturing traceability” is to provide the information about the manufacturing process to be able to react against defects or wrong behaviours showed up in final products, but originated during manufacturing. With the review of the traceability data it may be possible to find, for instance, the lot identification of all components used to make a specific piece (Trace Back or Tracing). Then if a component lot is identified as suspected, the manufacturer can identify the final products made with components from that lot (Trace Forward or Tracking) [3]. 1.2 Traceability for spread industrial collaborative manufacturing: ETraceability. As manufacturers try to be more “adaptive” and “collaborative” to better respond to customer needs and market forces, they increasingly outsource and partner with other companies to bring products to market. Collaboration is extended further beyond simple and traditional manufacturing contractorsupplier relations by considering all product life cycle stages along the whole supply chain [4] [5]. Companies shift internal manufacturing operations to distributed supply chain ones [6], establishing temporary alliances among enterprises to share resources and competencies. In these “extended enterprises”, distributed activities performed along the supply chain become “e-activities” when new Information Technologies (IT) and standards for data exchange are applied. In the same way, manufacturing traceability activities for extended enterprises has to evolve from an internal company focus to an external one [7]. The objective is enabling collaborative spread traceability activities over the whole product life cycle and along the whole supply chain: “e-traceability”, when using new IT and standards for data exchange. Proceedings of the 5th WSEAS International Conference on E-ACTIVITIES, Venice, Italy, November 20-22, 2006 425