Manufacturing information and knowledge models to support global manufacturing co-ordination.

Co-ordination decisions have been recognised as crucial to the success of enterprises to realise global manufacturing strategies. Information sharing and integration between collaborating members is one of the fundamental requirements of global manufacturing co-ordination. This thesis reports the research on information and knowledge model support for global manufacturing co-ordination, and focuses on the understanding of the information and knowledge structure of global manufacturing capability as well as the necessary interaction mechanisms with product and order related information. A new information and knowledge structure has been explored to represent global manufacturing capability. In addition, a product model and an order model have also been identified to provide product information and order information respectively. The information and knowledge requirements have been explored through a multiperspective modelling approach including IDEFO activity modelling, IDEF3 process modelling, and UML. The structure of the main classes in the information and knowledge models has been defined and the relationships between the classes have been specified. The new defined manufacturing model structure consists of four main classes. It not only comprises process and resource, two basic and important types of manufacturing capabilities demonstrated by a series of applications, but also includes configuration and knowledge classes. The definition of the configuration class in the manufacturing model provides the potential for a global enterprise to access dynamic and unlimited resources on a network, with flexible capabilities to respond to global market requirements. The knowledge class in the manufacturing model enables the retrieval of preferred solutions for global manufacturing co-ordination decisions under different conditions or combinations of conditions, and thus makes the manufacturing model more intelligent. The information and knowledge structures have been tested by experimental systems based on the OODBMS ObjectStore SP8.0 and Visual C++ 6.0, and explored with a case study from the automotive industry. It has been shown that the manufacturing model together with the product model and the order model provide effective support for global manufacturing co-ordination decisions.