A MANUFACTURING INFORMATION SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

The 21 century marketplace poses many challenges for modern manufacturing organizations thus requiring them to display increased levels of agility supported by an effective information systems infrastructure. The objective of this paper is to propose an Information Systems Architecture that meets the challenges of modern manufacturing organizations. For the manufacturing information systems architecture (MISA) to successfully meet these challenges it must satisfy five objectives: 1. Support the Value Chain Activities; 2. Support the interactions among the five Interacting Organizational Variables (i.e. Task, Communication, Technology, People, Structure); 3. Effectively deal with Industry Factors and Forces; 4. Integrate the organization internally and with its environment; and 5. Address other Enterprise Engineering issues. We present a MISA that satisfies these five objectives.