An information management system for production planning in virtual enterprises

Information management is a challenge in a virtual enterprise environment which is characterised by distribution, autonomy and co-operation. Based on an on-going ESPRIT project (X-CITTIC), this paper presents a distributed information management architecture for production planning and control in semiconductor manufacturing virtual enterprises. Object technologies are widely used in its design and implementation. A detailed structure of the components in the architecture, called information managers, is also suggested and introduced. Each information manager has three elements: a data object server, a database and a group of meta-objects. It can provide not only basic services (e.g. read and write) but also advanced services (e.g. notification, security control, subscription and data sending). Finally the current X-CITTIC information management system is introduced.