APMS 2013 International Conference
Sustainable Production and Service Supply Chains
September 9 -12, 2013 – State College, PA, USA
Special Session
Interoperability in the Manufacturing and Supply Chain Services
1. Description
Enterprises continue to outsource large parts of their manufacturing operations. Recently, a global leader in
manufacturing networking products and services has indicated that 100% of its manufacturing has been outsourced.
Also, it is well-known that many high-tech companies today focus on design and innovation while their products are
largely manufactured by contract manufacturers. This outsourcing megatrend presents a number of supply chain
management challenges to these enterprises. The following are some of the challenges:
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How to efficiently and effectively identify the right suppliers or manufacturers? The customers need to identify
suppliers who are capable of producing and delivering the desired products or components at the right cost,
place, quality, time, and sustainability level.
How to efficiently and effectively identify right manufacturing opportunities? Conversely, suppliers or
manufacturers need to constantly seek new opportunities to be part of existing or newly created extended
enterprises. Therefore, they need effective methods and tools to match customer requirements to their core
competency where they can deliver the best value from the available resources and maximize their profits.
How to assure correct manufacturing information communication? As manufacturing and supply chain
communication are becoming more and more digital, enterprises need to ensure that selected suppliers not only
possess required material processing capabilities but also needed information processing capabilities.
How to increase performances in the supply chain? Enterprises seek more control of lower tier suppliers even
though they have outsourced their manufacturing. In order to optimize profits, service-level performances, and
sustainability, enterprises would like to control where parts are sourced from, at what price, quality, at what
sustainability levels, and how they are manufactured.
How to support holistic view of the supply chain? Manufacturing occurs not only in traditional factories.
Product assemblies, packaging, and labeling occur in warehouses and distribution centers. In addition,
enterprises increasingly have to consider all life-cycle stages including reverse logistics, recycling and disposal.
Therefore, enterprises not only need to select the right manufacturers but also logistics service providers.
These business challenges call for supply chain modeling, information modeling and integration frameworks that
enable enterprises to quickly evaluate and connect to new suppliers and vice versa in order to improve their
performances in the outsourcing manufacturing economies we live in. In this special session, we are inviting
technical papers that address these requirements that would lead to enhanced interoperability in the
manufacturing and supply chain services.
2. Topics:
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
1) Manufacturing services case studies (e.g., request for quotes, dynamic supply chain collaboration due to
supply business chain uncertainties, real-time supply chain monitoring that drive the information
requirements in the manufacturing and supply chain services, etc);
2) Interoperability requirements for optimal supply chain operations in multi-tier, loosely-coupled
enterprises;
3) Modeling methodologies and frameworks that enable interoperable integration architecture for
manufacturing and supply chain services;
4) Scalable and manageable information modeling approaches that enable interoperable manufacturing and
supply chain services for the distributed, rapidly evolving enterprise.
3. Organizers of the Special Session
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Serm Kulvatunyou, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Nenad Ivezic, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Chris Peters, The Lucrum Group
Farhad Ameri, Texas State University
Hyunbo Cho, POSTECH University
Richard Bank, Sustainable Supply Chain Foundation
Yun Peng, University of Maryland Baltimore County
Garret Minakawa, Oracle
Brench Boden, USAF
Kincho Law, Stanford University