A hierarchical multi-view modeling for Networked Joint Manufacturing System

Nowadays enterprises have to reduce manufacturing costs and increase products quality through partnerships in order to distribute their production activities with experts worldwide. The distributed activities, if managed properly, can reduce costs, increase manufacturing flexibility and efficiency, as well as avoids short-term local economic fluctuations. These arrangements lead to a new format of collaboration, very different from previous models for cross-enterprises cooperation such as Joint Venture (JV). Apart from financial aspects, the collaborations in manufacturing process have to be intensified and involve much more operational details of individual partner. In this paper, a new reference model of Networked Joint Manufacturing System (NJMS) is proposed for enterprise to benefit from the cross-enterprises collaboration at the tactical level. The NJMS incorporates a federation model for integrating independent enterprises together based on business logic perspectives rather than information integration. A representation method for the NJMS called Hierarchical Multi-View Model (HMVM) has been developed. This representation method provides manufacturing enterprises a multiple angle or view to approach the NJMS so as to simplify its implementation by reducing the complexity of defining system objectives or requirements.