The purpose of this case study is to develop a virtual extended factory (VEF) in the cloud supporting the (networked) value chain of a company in the Manufacturing Industry. The virtual extended factory makes use of cloud techniques to integrate business processes of the companies that participate in this VEF. Collaboration within and between companies will be supported by extended use of Web 2.0 technology. Chain-wide Business Process Innovation will be integrated part of the VEF solution.
This is a new and innovative concept in the Manufacturing Industry, where most enterprises rely on old-fashioned ERP systems. This concept is innovative, not in the sense of developing new technology, but in the sense of using a combination of existing new technologies in a way that is not done before.
Vlastuin, a SME manufacturing company in the Metal Subcontracting Industry, has a lot of experience in aligning business processes and IT. Whereas the production departments adopted the Lean concept, the IT departments tried to implement this concept in the manufacturing software.
During developing of this manufacturing software, the idea aroused that in theory it would be possible to integrate the purchase and production control processes. The main idea is to set up a virtual extended factory in the cloud that can be linked in an innovative way to business applications of other companies in the networked value chain.
The business applications can be back-end systems that have to be at least partly opened to the cloud. These back-end systems can directly be linked to the VEF, but another option is to build a Cloud based business Process service Layer between the back-end systems and the VEF.
