Interoperable Process Engineering System for Collaborative Optimization of Product Life-Cycle

Abstract

Most of the industrial organizations, including SMEs, need to quickly react and adapt to the changing market conditions imposed by globalization, such as new sustainability directives or new type of customers. The fulfillment of these requirements on time is a must so as to remain competitive in the global markets. Since data management information systems are already present in almost all the corpus of industrial enterprises as custom developments or standard PLM solutions, the natural technical evolution that aims to provide an effective answer to these changing market conditions comprises the shifting from a data management perspective towards a process management view. Hence, the challenge is how to manage business processes that build upon existing information systems so as to encourage business agility, efficiency, and interoperability. The proposed approach roots on the Business Process Management (BPM) discipline and leverages process optimization through the systematic modeling and reengineering of business processes accompanied by supporting interoperable and configurable eco-services, which are conceived as sustainability-aware services designed to optimize some aspects of the product life-cycle through eco-constraints management.

Process improvement based on an integrated approach to DMAIC and multi-method simulation

“…In the industrial landscape, the optimization of internal processes for the purposes of improved outcomes requires the operators to understand the components that comprise their systems along with their impact on the operations of the overall system. The use of AnyLogic software in this case will utilize the DE simulation approach, whereby the main target of this approach is its capacity to influence the changes made to the production processes or their outputs (Armijo and Sorli 2014). Lin (2013) also points out that this approach has value in industrial and military applications, where the identification of definitive outcomes is critical in ensuring the maintenance of control over these processes and their outputs.…”