Conceptualizing a Network Process Model Based Production Platform

Abstract

First tier system suppliers play a key role in every economy. However, in a lot of European regions there is a lack of these kinds of business players even though OEM production is established, mostly due to political reasons. Based on nearly 25 years of experience in supplier network research, this paper proposes a model based platform that can support the establishment of a supplier based system through a network of SMEs. This platform streamlines requirements, orders and tasks and provides the ability to utilize a network’s collective production capabilities more efficiently to comply with complex OEM system product requirements and remain competitive in a global market space. An underlying network process model allows for an efficient and flexible alignment of interfaces between network participants while a competence mapping helps allocating automatically fragmented production tasks to producers based on available production capacity and technological resources.