Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a state-of-the-art approach to running organizations with the help of comprehensive information systems, providing support for key business processes and more general, for electronic business (e-business). ERP has evolved from earlier approaches, in particular, materials requirement planning (MRP) and manufacturing resource planning (called MRP II) in the 1...

The manufacturing enterprises are now experiencing high pressure of competition. In addition, the advancement in computer software, hardware, networks, information technologies and integration has been gradually reshaping the manufacturing companies by shifting from the industrial age to the information and knowledge era. Due to these elevated competitiveness and advanced computer technology, a...

E$cient long-term capacity management is vital to any manufacturing "rm. It has implications on competitive performance in terms of cost, delivery speed, dependability and #exibility. In a manufacturing strategy, capacity is a structural decision category, dealing with dynamic capacity expansion and reduction relative to the long-term changes in demand levels. Sales and operations planning (S&O...

In order to realize STEP-NC-oriented computer numerical control machining and achieve optimal performance in manufacturing, a multi-agent system for process planning in STEP-NC based manufacturing was designed. By analyzing the characteristic of STEP-NC data model, a manufacturing feature-oriented process planning method was proposed in this study and the distributed artificial intelligence met...

Sequencing is perhaps the single most important production planning routine for mix flexibility achievement on a shared manufacturing resource. However, unlike discrete manufacturing, there are limited prescribed techniques for sequencing routines in process manufacturing. This paper explores sequencing via the product wheel technique through its application in two case studies.

Intelligent agents can enable the integration of preliminary design with manufacturing planning software systems. These agents execute in a computer-based collaborative environment called “multiagent platform.” A prototype agent platform supporting the integration of preliminary design and manufacturing planning has been developed at NIST. These agents have access to a knowledge base that is im...

In this paper a class of planning problems is dealt with where resources have a central role: they can allow for many alternative courses of actions, but, at the same time, they have to be used economically. Such problems are typical in manufacturing domains, e.g., in manufacturing process planning or inspection planning. The problem of constrained plan optimization is exposed in such resource−...

Intelligent agents provide a means to integrate various manufacturing software applications. The agents are typically executed in a computer-based collaborative environment, sometimes referred to as a multi-agent system. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a prototype multi-agent system supporting the integration of manufacturing planning, predictive machinin...