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In extended enterprises, real-time manufacturing information tracking plays an important role and aims to provide the right information to the right person at the right time in the right format to achieve optimal production management among the involved enterprises. However, many enterprises are caused by lack of timely, accurate and consistent manufacturing data. The laggard information transfer flow and the unmatched information transfer method bring extended enterprises much more uncertainty and unknowingness. This paper proposes a RFID-enabled real-time manufacturing information tracking infrastructure (RTMITI) to address the real-time manufacturing data capturing and manufacturing information processing methods for extended enterprises. Following the proposed infrastructure, the traditional manufacturing resources such as employees, machines and materials are equipped with RFID devices (Readers and Tags) to build the real-time data capturing environment. In addition, a series of manufacturing information processing methods are established to calculate and track the real-time manufacturing information such as real-time manufacturing cost, progress, WIP (Work-in-progress) inventory etc. in parts/assemblies/products at machines/shop floors/enterprises/ extended enterprises levels. Finally, a case study is given to demonstrate the developed framework and corresponding methodologies.
Zhang et al. (2010) studied this question.