A service-oriented architecture of virtual enterprise for manufacturing industry

Manufacturing industry is now being challenged with globalization and grid technology provides a reliable and distributed computing solution. In this paper, firstly, a service-oriented architecture of virtual enterprise (VE) is proposed. Then three main modules, which are project management, partner management and business process management, are described how to construct a VE based on manufacturing grid. The project management controls the projects distributed in different enterprises, the partner management maps roles in entity enterprises to that of VE, and the business process management inspects the VE process flows coming from different entity enterprises.

I. Introduction

The manufacturing industry, a pillar industry of the national economy, is now being challenged with globalization. The individual enterprise needs to rapidly respond to market requirement, while it is difficult for traditional tightly coupled cooperation between enterprises to do that. Virtual enterprise (VE), which is composed with many trans-regional enterprises or even multinationals, provides a new model for the integration of resources, technologies and manpower.