A Collaborative Enterprise Framework to Support Engineering Changes in Manufacturing Planning and Control

Abstract The main challenges for the enterprises are complexity of the products and uncertainty of the processes. This challenge involves engineering change that frequently requires redesign or altering the products which may call for enterprise agility and flexibility. To meet such a requirement, enterprises require better tools for resilient manufacturing planning and control, and execution. Due to the limitations of the enterprise resource planning (ERP), there is a question how would the future enterprise systems will look like. To approach an answer to this question, this research paper provides an analysis of engineering changes, its characteristics, problems and their implications. Against the background, a conception of future collaborative enterprise model (CoPIDSS: Collaborative planning, information and decision support system) is proposed. In this paper, we discuss the importance of collaborative planning for enterprise resilient manufacturing planning and control. We have analysed user stories provided by industry as scenarios, to understand the collaborative processes in their workplaces and their needs for collaborative platform support. This paper aims to address the following research questions: How does engineering changes and error handling affect the degree of collaboration and decision making within and across enterprises and how CoPDISS helps to overcome this? Is the storage and management of knowledge the one of the key factor to engineering changes and error handling control in a collaboration and decision environment?