Resiliency of Smart Manufacturing Enterprises via Information Integration

Abstract

Smart Manufacturing enterprises emerge as interconnected, geographically distributed, data driven, and adaptive. While smartness is improved by the integration of information, this also leads to complexity. In this paper, smart manufacturing enterprises are modeled as a complex adaptive system with resiliency as a property. Resiliency is indicated by the enterprises’ ability to comprehensively understand risks and adapt to changes, and information integration plays an important role. A systematic literature review reveals that the current perspectives on manufacturing resiliency are narrow as they are concentrated on isolated parts of the manufacturing process and do not account for enterprise-wide risks that are typical to a smart manufacturing enterprise. An expanded set of risk sources is important for resiliency and information integration has a key role to play in reducing these risks. The complex adaptive systems lens employed in the paper prescribes a five-part framework to organize key risk sources including: external environment, internal environment, manufacturing processes, technology; and demand-supply networks. Additionally, for each key risk source, the role of integrated information is discussed. Lastly, complexity of a single function (logistics) is described and the rational for a CAS view is provided.