Supervisory control and data acquisition for virtual enterprise.

The new manufacturing paradigms, such as agile manufacture and lean production, are leading industrial countries towards the new generation of concurrent enterprises involving virtual enterprise architecture and concurrent engineering extended methodology. Continuing adaptation to the market can only be achieved efficiently if the planning and control processes are both optimized horizontally (Automatic Control Systems) and vertically (Management Control Systems). The desired improvement in performance and the realization of global enterprise objectives require a tight integration of the units of the enterprise. The close monitoring of the operational performance of various plants, manufacturing shop-floors/cells/machines, as well as their associated instrumentation and control is of increasing strategic importance. Failures can lead to increased costs and reduced product quality, consistency and production, and to plant shutdowns and increased environmental impact. There is a real need for advanced monitoring technologies to be applied, and their potential demonstrated, on complex industrial plants. The planning and scheduling of manufacturing systems integrated into virtual enterprise architectures requires the implementation of new General Master Production Planning and Scheduling techniques and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) functions. This paper discusses some key issues on the SCADA-oriented open system for virtual enterprise architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]