An Integrated Information Infrastructure for Agile Manufacturing

Agility imposes special requirements on the information systems used to run an enterprise. In addition to satisfying the traditional requirements, an agile enterprise information system must be able to be reconfigured in a very short time and should be able to include parts of information systems from other companies if a Virtual Corporation is required to meet the market demand. The traditional, common shared data base model of integration has severe problems in this environment. The Systems Integration Architecture (SIA) project is based on a new, transformation model of integration and provides sets of high level services which allow information system modules, including foreign modules, to be rapidly reconfigured. These services include the management of information (naming, locations, format, files structure and data access type) as well as the relationships among data sets, communications between objects on heterogeneous computer systems, wrappers for legacy software, diverse control approaches, composition of modules into processes and user interfaces. SIA also allows for the integration of functions and control as well as data. The transformation model and the Systems Integration Architecture will be briefly described along with an update on the status of the project.