A Rule-Oriented Concurrent Architecture to Effect Adaptiveness for Integrated Manufacturing Enterprises

The challenge facing today’s manufacturing enterprises is not just how to integrate “islands” of information across the enterprise, but also how to keep them in sync with the changing needs and technology. A new approach for solving some of the problems related to growth and change in an integrated environment involving multiple information systems working together is developed. This approach entails (1) a metadatabase serving as the knowledge base for enterprise integration, (2) a concurrent architecture using the metadatabase for integration, and (3) a rule-oriented programming environment (ROPE) for implementing and managing the concurrent architecture. The paper presents the ROPE method, which contributes in its own right to the concurrent processing of distributed rulebase systems. 1. ADAPTIVENESS AND INTEGRATION: A NEW APPROACH