Ebook: E-commerce And Digital Manufacturing

In recent years, the importance of Internetand World Wide Web (WWW) technologies inmanufacturing industries has been risingvery rapidly in a global context. According toa recent study, Manufacturing Foresight 2020,conducted by UK Department of Trade andIndustry (DTI), the impact of thisdevelopment is deemed the most profoundsince the Industrial Revolution. The wavinginterests in the electronic commerce andelectronic business (e-commerce/e-business)have spread, from the heartland (productdevelopment) to the battlefield (shop floor), ofmanufacturing enterprises. The number ofWeb applications is ever on the rise, andmany practitioners are keen to try theseremote systems through Web browsers tosupport their decision-making activities.Indeed, product design and manufactureprofessionals will soon be able to benefitfrom such remote services and supportcommercially available on the Internet. Thepractice and performance of productdevelopment and realization areexpected to make immense progress.Web applications in product designand manufacture signal the beginning of anew era of the digital manufacturingenterprise. However, many loopholes are found in thedevelopment and application processesbecause of domain complexity andtechnology sophistication, thus generatingnew challenges to both the developers andpractitioners. A simple example is thedifference in the user interfaces between Webapplications and traditional applications.Indeed, abundant issues need to be resolvedbefore the full launch of digitalmanufacturing can come into being. Thisspecial issue has solicited seven papersfrom various research groups whereresearch and practice of digitalenterprises have been conducted for severalyears. The first paper by Dignum reports on anumber of e-commerce projects at productioncompanies in The Netherlands. The researchis concerned with what is the appropriatemodel for introducing e-commerce inproduction companies, what objectivesthese production companiesintend to achieve, and what the currenttrends are. The second paper is contributed by a groupof Korean researchers. The research ismainly concerned with the digitalmanufacturing technologies in the context ofthe shipbuilding industry. New conceptssuch as digital shipbuilding, virtualshipyard, and simulation-based design (SBD)are explored. A case study is presented usinga virtual assembly simulation system forshipbuilding (VASSS) to evaluateblock erection sequence takingaccount of shipyard facilities,operational efficiency and equipmentreplacement time. Provision of manufacturing services andapplications over the Web are essential toform what is called a manufacturing portal.The third paper comes from a group ofChinese researchers led by ProfessorJiang. They are working on thedevelopment of a manufacturing portalserver platform and e-manufacturing Webapplications. E-business solutions are generallybeneficial to large corporations. But it isunclear how small and medium sizedenterprises can benefit from thedevelopment. The fourth paper is based on asurvey carried out within CanadianSMEs, aiming to identify the elements ofe-business solutions that are most suitablefor SMEs. The development of Web applications inproduct design and manufacturing has beena great challenge to all of us. Professor Chenghas been working on and supervising anumber of research projects for severalyears. The fifth paper reports on theexperience acquired from the developmentand the implementation of a Web-basedsystem to support decision-makingactivities in bearing design andmanufacturing. The issues under discussioninclude design information integration,remote execution, Java programming,client-server architecture, and user interfacedesign. There is no doubt that business playersinvolved in a supply chain or extendedenterprise would benefit significantly if theyshared production information andactivities. However, there has been noanswer to the very simple question of whatproduction information should be shared andhow they should be shared. The last paper isconcerned with how e-business solutionscan be used to improve the informationsharing and thus its impacts on theperformance. The sixth paper presents an Internet-basedvirtual machining system which applies thevirtual manufacturing technology to a CNCmachining centre. The system is implementedto execute digital machining and verification,to transmit the NC code data to machiningcentres, and to manipulate the machinethrough the Internet. The guest editorial team would like tothank all the authors for the time and effortin contributing their papers and inincorporating the referees’ comments inrevising their manuscripts. Thanks areespecially extended to the referees in givingtheir valuable comments to the papers, whichare most essential for this special issue tocome into being. Finally, the guesteditors would like to express theirheartfelt thanks to Professor DavidBennett, the editor-in-chief, for hisadvice, help, and support, to make thisspecial issue project a success. George Huang K.L. Mak P.Y. Jiang Previously published in: The International Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, Volume 13, Number 5, 2002