Toward Intelligent Integrated Manufacturing Planning-Execution

In today’s competitive global market place, agility has become a survival factor for many manufacturers. A key measurement of manufacturing agility is the time it takes an organization to respond to market changes. The production management system used by most manufacturers today has disconnected planning and execution processes. This situation often hinders the manufacturer to fully explore market opportunities because production plans and executions cannot be adjusted to changes in each other quickly. The Consortium for Integrated Intelligent Manufacturing Planning-Execution (CIIMPLEX) is formed to address this problem by developing an open architecture for manufacturing software applications and deliver integrated planning-execution solutions. With integrated planning-execution, a manufacturing plan can reflect real-time factory capacity. This enables a manufacturer to predict product delivery dates accurately. It also enables a manufacturer to change plans quickly (e.g., on a daily basis) to explore emerging market opportunities.