SCM’2002 conference on Production Systems Design, Supply Chain Management and Logistics, Miedzyzdroje, Poland

The SCM’2002 conference on Production Systems Design, Supply Chain Management and Logistics, Miedzyzdroje, Poland, 2002-10-23/25, was held as part of the 9th Intern. Multi-Conference on Advanced Computer Systems (ACS’2002). The conference was organised jointly by the Techn. University of Szczecin, Poland and the University of Technologies of Troyes, France.

About 150 people attended the conference. The proceedings contain a total of 68 papers covering a wide range of topics relevant to the subject of the conference. Authors are mostly from Europe with a large representation from Eastern Europe countries. Papers are organised in 12 sessions including a plenary – held jointly with ACS - and a poster session.

The plenary session with 4 papers from both conferences demonstrated the wide range of topics covered: Fuzzy expert system for the description of the middle east destabilisation (Facchinetti), Production control policies in multi-stage supply chains (Hennet), Initiative for international consensus in enterprise integration (Kosanke), and Algorithm for coalition avoidance at sea (Smierzchalski). 
The following sessions covered two major themes: Production systems and Enterprise systems.

The 7 Sessions on production systems: Computer-aided design, Flexible manufacturing systems, Supply and inventory management, Production planning and scheduling, Facility location, transportation and logistics, Optimisation via simulation, and Optimisation in product and process design. Enterprise system sessions were: Enterprise management, Extended enterprise, and Intelligent agent technologies. The following short descriptions refer to papers from the enterprise systems area.

  • The human aspects in BPR were addressed by Worley et al. A modelling framework was presented aimed at supporting process modelling and centred on the concepts of skills, role and knowledge. The authors identify four classes of roles (interpersonal, informational, decisional and operational), five skill categories (technical, organisational, analytical and decisional, interpretational and formalisational, and human or motivational), and two distinctions in the knowledge domain (data, information, knowledge and unstructured, and structured knowledge). 
  • Millet and Botta-Genoulaz, presented ERP implementation as a new research topic. Starting from the high failure rate of ERP implementations, the authors argue the need for project methodologies, performance evaluation and enterprise modelling. Reference models would improve the project requirement analysis and would in turn lead to integratable module type software replacing today’s monolithic packages. 
  • The EU PROMINENCE project (Boer et al) is aimed at European SME based extended enterprises. The project will develop methods and tools to support such enterprises and increase their effectivity and profitability. First project results were presented.
  • Performance measurements for the supply chain was addressed by Neubert and Pichot. The work is aimed on defining a methodology to choose indicators from world-wide standards (CEN TC 273, SCOR Model) and is based on the balanced scorecard methodology. The SCOR model identifies 200 supply chain performance indicators structured into five categories: reliability, responsiveness, flexibility, cost, and asset management. CEN proposes 100 performance indicators classified according to the different supply chain activities: sales and customer service, supply and supplier service, product, production, warehousing, transport, inventory control, and varied measure. A supply chain dashboard is defined that classifies the indicators in 4 categories: customer, finance, internal process, learning and growth.
  • The paper on ontology-based knowledge repository organisation for supply chain management (Smirnov et al) described a knowledge source network (KSNet) configuration approach using ontology management, intelligent agents, constraint satisfaction, soft computing and groupware. The paper focussed on the knowledge repository, which has a three-level structure: semantic description (ontology library), service (knowledge map and user profile) and physical (Internal knowledge base). See also Sandkuhl below.
  • Sandkuhl et al, focused on knowledge logistics in agile SME networks based on competence models as knowledge sources and knowledge supply networks (KSNet – see also above) as infrastructure for knowledge logistics. The paper introduces organisational and technological aspects – including university – SME cooperation, semantic nets and multi-agent frameworks. In a third paper on the KSNet (Smirnov et al), a conceptual multi-agent architecture is presented together with a negotiation protocol for knowledge logistics in distributed intelligent enterprises. In addition the paper talks in detail about an agent knowledge representation model.
  • A concept for a multi-agent system for graphic-like environment management was described by Cetnarowicz and Kisiel-Dorohinicki. The concept may be applied in two ways: optimisation of the system operation and optimisation of its functionality. Simulation experiments verify the applicability of the concept for the two domains chosen: the computer network management and the flexible manufacturing system management.
Conference proceedings have been printed by Informa Wydzial Informatyki Politechniki Szsczecinskiej, Szczecin, 2002, ISBN 83-87362-46-8
 

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