An architecture for active product configuration management in industrial virtual enterprises

The importance of configuration management (CM) is increasingly recognised as customers demand safer, higher-quality, and lower-priced products. Altho ugh various standards for configuration management exist, there are no inte rnationally agreed standards. Further, existing CM standards do not address the issue of integrating heterogeneous, autonomous, and distributed inform ation, especially for virtual enterprises. This paper proposes an architect ure for product configuration management in industrial virtual enterprises. The architecture includes the common objects and functions extracted from various CM standards. Based on the World Wide Web (WWW) and common object r equest broker architecture (CORBA), it will enable the integration of heter ogeneous, autonomous, and distributed information. Further, the architectur e adopts a rule concept that will provide an active mechanism for configura tion management. A prototype system has been implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed architecture. The proposed architecture and th e prototype will provide a generalised framework and implementation guideli nes for CM systems that can shorten the product life cycle, minimise produc tion cost, and guarantee the quality of products in industrial virtual ente rprises.