Study on manufacturing information sharing and tracking for extended enterprises

To solve manufacturing information sharing and tracking problems, three key issues are discussed. Firstly, templates are used to host manufacturing information, though they differ in their content and capacity. Secondly, the manufacturing information sharing and controlling method (MISCM) locates every information item at a discrete point on the manufacturing information plane according to its invisibility and unusability. And each user has several various privilege areas in the plane. According to the mapping relationship between the information set and the discrete point set, every user is entitled to access some information items. A template that contains these privileges is activated. Thirdly, when the manufacturing process is in progress, templates are instantiated. Then, a time-dependent instantiated template net (TIT-net) emerges. Based on its searching algorithm, information tracking is achieved through the history view and the in-time view. Finally, some examples show how these issues work together to implement a fluent, controllable and dynamic manufacturing information tracking mechanism.