Virtual Manufacturing Background Project

Survey Response

• Name(s): David Grossman, Peter Will, Mohsin Beg, Victor Lee
• Contact Information:

  grossman@isi.edu, will@isi.edu, mohsin@isi.edu, vilee@isi.edu,            Dave Grossman
             310-822-1511
             USC/Information Sciences Institute
             4676 Admiralty Way
             Marina del Rey CA 90292
  

• Information related to Virtual Manufacturing

  http://irobot.isi.edu/flex/flexmain.html
  
  FLEXIBLE ENSEMBLE MANUFACTURING
     - David Grossman and Peter Will
       USC/Information Sciences Institute
       4676 Admiralty Way
       Marina del Rey, CA 90292
  
     - Supported by ARPA/ESTO contract # DABT 63-92-C-0052.
  
  ABSTRACT:
  
  Typical electronics assembly plants have over 100 immediate
  suppliers, each with 100 suppliers, and so forth. The overall
  supply network includes thousands of companies, each using
  computers to manage production information. Over 80 vendors
  sell software that helps to schedule manufacturing and to
  control inventories. Nevertheless, US electronic equipment
  companies spend over $30B each year on manufacturing overhead,
  and have inventories of over $25B.
  
  Our project is concerned with production scheduling in a
  manufacturing supply network. Our goal is to provide a higher
  level of software that bridges between local production
  information systems, so that scheduling and inventory control
  can be more automated, faster, and better. Central to our work
  is the need to maintain the confidentiality of local production
  data, since supply networks consist of autonomous, competing
  companies. Additionally, our work strives for compatibility
  with evolving trends in Electronic Commerce.
  
  The main topics we are working on are methods for:
     - Exchanging "Just-Enough-Information" for global scheduling
     - Local, coarse, real time capacity management
     - Pricing, qualification, and negotiation
  
  We have invented a Demand-Availability-Order (DAO) algorithm that
  can be recursively distributed across the supply network.  It
  combines features from prior MRP, Kanban, and Reorder Point
  methodologies, while avoiding some of their pitfalls. Simulations
  are highly encouraging; we also have some analytic results.  A
  paper will be available in the near future. We are now starting
  to build systems to implement these methods.
  
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  I have some difficulty matching our work against your taxonomy:
  
  It most closely matches your area 6-Integrating Infrastucture &
  Architecture, except that our work is more specialized than what
  you probably mean by those terms.  Our work also relates strongly
  to your areas 8-Methodology and 9-Integration of Legacy Data.  To
  a lesser extent, our work relates to your areas 2-Environment
  Construction Technologies, 7-Simulation, and 11-Verification,
  Validation & Measurement.  There is a slight link to 12-Workflow.
  
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