Distributed Virtual Facto for Strategic Decision Making under e-Business Environment

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The research concerns to develop basic tools to construct a distributed virtual factory (DVF) for the support of strategic decision making under e- business environment and to seek the effectiveness of DVF in applying the studies of artificial market and/or virtual enterprise. The major research results are listed as follows:1.Concept and Modeling tools of DVF(1)A distributed virtual factory concept is proposed to develop a large scale manufacturing system based on distributed simulation technology. As basic tools to construct a DVF, communication interfaces for various simulation languages in the market and the synchronization mechanisms, named time bucket methods, are developed.(2)Virtual factories manufacturing discrete type products and continuous type products are developed by integrating simulators of sub-factories.(3)A production management system in the market is implemented as a factory management system of the constructed DVFs. Know-hows for the implementation of management s … More ystems in general are obtained through the experience.(4)Adaptation and updating mechanisms of simulation models to the dynamically varying real manufacturing system is investigated and basic insights for next generation simulation systems are attained.(5)Cost based evaluation of system performance is proposed in addition to the time and quantity based evaluation in the past. Activity based costing (ABC) method is adopted and a prototype system is developed for the models in this research.2.Application and extended studies of DVF for strategic decision making(1)DVFs constructed in the research are utilized in various studies to improve the manufacturing systems in hardware configurations and operational policies, demonstrating the importance and effectiveness to investigate the system from the global view of DVF in addition to the local views of sub-factories. The usefulness and effectiveness of cost based evaluation is also experienced throughout the studies and the importance of a DVF with cost based evaluation function is confirmed as the future tool in strategic decision making in the factory planning and management.(2)Artificial market and virtual enterprises are extensively studied from the viewpoint of the complex economy. The studies not only revealed important insights of the objective systems but also suggested the importance of utilization of DVF in the decision making necessitated in the supply chain management. Less