Scalable Enterprise Systems: Scalable Information Framework for the Extended Business Enterprise

这笔赠款为通信标准和接口的建模、开发和原型制作提供资金，这些标准和接口将支持可扩展的企业资源规划系统。基于对一组现有供应链的审查，将开发一个通用模型来表示供应链和支持链内交易所需的数据。将为供应链中的通信接口开发基于XML的标准，该供应链由从链中的许多供应商接收产品并为链中的许多客户创建产品的环节组成。构建的模型不仅用于表示供应商、制造商和客户(供应链)之间的线性关系，而且还用于表示只能表示为二维有向图(供应网络)的复杂关系。原型软件将进行设计、开发和测试，以确定该模型对小型缝制产品(如降落伞)、供应网络以及服装、鞋类和化学防护服等复杂军用缝制产品的可扩展性的支持程度。最终的可扩展性将支持提供消耗性军用产品的组织的整个供应网络。项目表明，这项研究的结果将导致ERP系统的新功能，目前仅支持共同所有权或管理权的公司的内部运营。该项目的结果将影响未来企业资源规划系统的设计，以便纳入对通过协作建立竞争优势的独立管理的合作组织(虚拟企业)团体的企业对企业的支持。这些新的扩展系统将减少供应网络中的总库存，同时减少所有供应网络部分的库存中断。制定的标准将促进供应网络中重要信息的交换，从而提高合作商业实体之间的信息流和产品流的速度。

This grant provides funding for the modeling, developing and prototyping of communication standards and interfaces that will support scalable, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Based upon an examination of a set of existing supply chains, a general model will be developed to represent a supply chain and the data needed to support transactions within the chain. Standards based upon XML will be developed for communication interfaces in a supply chain consisting of links that receive products from many suppliers in the chain and create products for many customers in the chain. Models will be constructed for representing not only linear relationships of suppliers, manufacturers and customers (supply chains) but also complex relationships that can only be represented as two-dimensional directed graphs (supply networks). The prototype software will be designed, developed and tested to determine how well the model supports operation of a small, sewn products (e.g. parachutes), supply network with scalability to a complex of military sewn products such as apparel, footwear, and chemical protective suits. Final scalability would support the entire set of supply networks of organizations providing consumable military products.Projections suggest the results of this research will lead to new features in ERP systems that currently support only internal operations of firms with common ownership or administration. Results of this project will influence the design of future ERP systems to incorporate business-to-business support for groups of cooperating, independently managed organizations (a virtual enterprise) that builds competitive advantage through collaboration. These new extended systems will reduce overall inventories in the supply network while, at the same time reducing stock outages in all supply network segments. The standards developed will facilitate the exchange of important information in the supply network and thus increase the velocity of both information and product flow between cooperating business entities.