Visualization Functionality of Virtual Factories

An Enhancement to Collaborative Business Process Management

Ahm Shamsuzzoha

, Filipe Ferreira

, Sven Abels

, Americo Azevedo

and Petri Helo

Department of Production, University of Vaasa, PO Box 700, Vaasa, Finland

Manufacturing Systems Engineering Unit, INESC TEC (formerly INESC Porto), Porto, Portugal

Ascora GmbH, Innovation & Product Development, Birkenallee 43, 27777 Ganderkesee, Germany

Keywords: Business Collaboration, Virtual Factory, Business Process Monitoring, Process Visualization, Small and

Medium Enterprise (SME).

Abstract: This paper focuses on process visualization that is applicable to managing a Virtual Factory (VF) business

environment. It briefly provides all aspects of implementing the dashboard user interface that is to be used

by the VF partners. The dashboard features state-of-the art business intelligence and provides data

visualization, user interfaces and menus to support VF partners to execute collaborative processes. With

advanced visualizations that produce quality graphics it offers a variety of information visualizations that

brings the process data to life with clarity. This data visualization provides critical operational matrices (e.g.

KPIs) required to manage virtual factories. Various technical aspects of this dashboard user interface portal

are elaborated within the scope of this research such as installation instructions, technical requirements for

the users and developers, execution and usage aspects, limitations and future works. The dashboard user

interface portal presents different widgets according to the VF requirements that are to be needed to support

the visualization and monitoring of various business processes within a VF. The research work highlighted

in this paper is conceptualized, developed and validated within the scope of the European Commission

NMP priority of the Seventh RTD Framework Programme for the ADVENTURE (ADaptive Virtual

ENterprise ManufacTURing Environment) project.

1 INTRODUCTION

The concept of business collaboration is not new but

it attracts growing interest to the business

communities due to its associated benefits and the

on-going globalization within the manufacturing

domain. This collaboration usually begins after

identifying a possible business opportunity. This

business opportunity is elaborated within the

possible partners, whose are selected based on

specific criteria such as their capacity, skills, costs or

locations. Often there exists a pool of companies

with similar expertizes and products known as

business community (Carneiro at al., 2010), virtual

organization breeding environment (Afsarmanesh

and Camarinha-Matos, 2005), industrial cluster

(Flores and Molina, 2000), etc., from which

potential partners are selected to form such business

network, known as virtual organization, virtual

enterprise, virtual factory (Jain et al., 2001), etc.

The concept of virtual factory (VF) as presented

in this research provides mechanisms and tools that

facilitate the creation and operation of collaborative

processes in a business environment. This

environment combines the power of individual

factories into a single virtual factory to achieve

complex manufacturing processes. It offers dynamic

business portfolio like partner finding, process

creation, process forecasting and optimization,

information exchange as well as real-time

monitoring. Along with such offers, virtual factory

needs to offer proven tools or technologies that

provide end-to-end integrated information and

communication technology (ICT) which will help to

facilitate information exchange between factories.

This possibility moves beyond the boundaries of the

individual enterprises involved in the business

network.

In any successful business cooperation there

needs to address monitoring and governance of the

collaborative processes (Shamsuzzoha et al., 2013).

This process monitoring enables to increase the

degree of flexibility within the virtual factory

599

Shamsuzzoha A., Ferreira F., Abels S., Azevedo A. and Helo P..

Visualization Functionality of Virtual Factories - An Enhancement to Collaborative Business Process Management.

DOI: 10.5220/0004881405990604

In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2014), pages 599-604

ISBN: 978-989-758-028-4

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

partners and helps them to react quickly to changes

and to participate in larger cross-companies

manufacturing processes. The objective of this

research is therefore to focus on process

visualization that is applicable to monitoring and

managing VF business environment. This research

briefly presents all aspects of implementing a

dashboard user interface that is to be used by the VF

partners to process monitoring.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows:

Section 2 presents theoretical framework of the

research, while Section 3 states the conceptual

framework of the virtual factory. Section 4 discusses

the overview of VF process visualization through

dashboard user interface. Section 5 illustrates a case

example, where the dashboard portal is used as a

tool for VF’s processes management. Overall

outcomes from this research are concluded with

future research directions in Section 6.

2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

To be successful in today’s turbulent and

competitive market environment, companies need to

acquire new business models, business strategies,

governance principle, processes and technological

capabilities (Ermilova and Afsarmanesh, 2006).

There are growing challenges towards

manufacturing enterprises such as increased product

variety, product’s complexity and quality demands,

reduced product life cycle and decreased revenue

margins. In order to tackle such challenges

companies, especially small and medium enterprises

(SMEs) need to join efforts with others through

collaboration. This collaboration offers companies to

bring the potential of dynamically adjusting the

needs in terms of dynamic inter-organizational

models, distributed business process management,

integration and coordination.

Due to recent development of ICT influences the

concept of forming collaborative networks that

allow manufacturing organizations to move from

highly data-driven environments to more

cooperative information or knowledge driven

environments (Jeong and Nof, 2009; Camarinha-

Matos et al., 2009). This environment develops

innovative manufacturing processes and products

that are capable of responding rapidly to

changing/uncertain demands, demands for custom-

tailored products and fierce international

competition in the new global economy. Typical

shared expertise, resources and skills through

business collaboration impose companies (SMEs)

high productivity levels for labor and manufacturing

facilities, a high level of agility and the use of new

business models to enhance the production

capabilities beyond companies’ borders.

Different types and forms of business

collaborations are described in the literature based

on the needs and perspectives. For instance virtual

enterprise (VE) or virtual organization (VO), this is

goal-oriented, temporary and is focused on a single

project or business opportunity (Camarinha-Matos et

al., 2005; Shamsuzzoha and Helo, 2012). Other type

of collaboration known as collaborative networked

organization (CNO), which is a network composed

of largely autonomous, geographically distributed

and heterogeneous in terms of operating

environment, culture, social capital and goals

(Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh, 2006). There

is specific type of collaboration network named as

virtual factory (VF), which is considered as the

partnerships between companies, where individual

partners are connected with each other through web-

enabled platform and is formed and operated for

designing and developing of both mass customized

or one-of-a-kind product and service.

3 VIRTUAL FACTORY:

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

The virtual factory (VF) aims at integration of

multiple organizations into one virtual platform for

exploiting a market opportunity. Upton and McAfee

(1996) define virtual factories as “collaborative,

internetworked environments in which several

partners electronically share information and IS

tools around a product (CAD/CAM, simulation-

based design) process, or project”. The VF can be

implemented to ensure that manufacturing processes

and sub-system designs will meet the pre-identified

requirements. It is used as the source of enterprise

knowledge sharing (know-how), adoption of

common best practices and open source/Web-based

applications are enablers to achieve both the concept

of integrated enterprise and the implementation of

collaborative networked enterprises for

manufacturing industry.

Figure 1: A conceptual architectural framework for virtual

factory environment.

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The architectural framework for VF is

highlighted in Figure 1. From Figure 1 it is seen that

the framework consists of four different layers such

as user interface layer, process layer, communication

layer and database layer. Each of the layers has its

own contents and functionalities. For instance, user

interface layer of the VF framework responsible for

process visualization, process monitoring and

operation control within the VF, whereas, process

layer acted upon process design, process planning

and scheduling and process execution. Through the

communication layer, VF partners received required

information and transfer to another with secured

way. All the necessary data or information is stored

within the database layer of VF framework, from

where requited information can be retrieved

according to need.

The communication channel between VF

partners’ is maintained through Web-based platform.

This platform is operated by the application of

Internet technology that provides necessary support

to exchange information between VF partners.

Different VF components or layers are connected

with the Web portal through porlets that allows them

to interface with each other for establishing required

communication channel. This channel use as the

base for VF processes monitoring and management

during the execution phase of the VF. Each portlet

of the portal contains restrictive information

depending on the predefined user role. So in the

same Web portal the displayed portlets will be

different for users with different roles.

4 PROCESS VISUALIZATION

THROUGH DASHBOARD USER

INTERFACE

Project Context

The global cross-industry manufacturing process (so

called virtual factory) is designed using a process

designer tool, where all the semantic annotations are

done as well as the partners’ assignment through.

The partner’s assignment can be based on skills,

time, cost as well as environmental aspects such as

emissions. The partners can be searched on the

Members repository, where any company around the

world can register and describe their services. Figure

2 displays the snap shot of members’ repository

within user interface layer. Within this repository

system, all the required information such as product

lines, lead-time, skills, performances, product costs,

etc., of the possible virtual factory partners is stored.

Figure 2: A snap shot of virtual factory members’

repository system.

Once the global cross-industry manufacturing

process is completed, the selected partners receive

notifications in order to answer the service request.

After all the legal aspects, the process model

(BPMN2) file is translated to the Complex Process

Execution Engine (CPEE) Language. The CPEE is

responsible for the process execution and services

invocation in the partners Legacy Systems.

Process Monitoring Component Context

A solid approach for Process Monitoring has to

consider monitoring and control functionalities for

the process execution, provide meaningful data in

order to allow an up-to-date, real-time diagnosis of

the process execution status. Process Monitoring

should be able to process high amount of data and it

has to be as user friendly as possible. To do so,

several technologies have been evaluated and

applied. Within the approach of the ADVENTURE

project, data is received via Extensible Messaging

and Presence Protocol (XMPP) events subscribed at

the CPEE. Events and associated data are then stored

at the cloud storage – a flexible and scalable data

storage system, being distributed among different

physical servers. A real time monitoring component

shows the process flow status. A Business Intelligent

Engine allows key performance indicators

definition, calculation and analysis. Finally, a Rules

Engine is used to create rules and trigger

notifications to a holistic dashboard.

To realize the holistic dashboard view, a user

based requirements elicitation has been performed

with the help of user consultation in 3 different

manufacturing environments: Mass Customized –

Engineering-To-Order (ETO), Mass Production –

(Make-To-Order) and Mass Production – Assembly

-To-Order (ATO). Details about the user

consultations may be found at the public deliverable

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D2.3 of AVENTURE at fp7-adventure.eu. - After

analysing the user consultations, it became clear that

the process monitoring should be organized in 3

levels:

 Level 1 – Global View, which monitors all the

virtual factories that a company is participating

 Level 2 – Specific process instance level with all

related data and information

 Level 3 – Specific process activity level with all

related data and information

Figure 3: An architectural framework for process

Monitoring Engine.

The process Monitoring Engine (Figure 3) counts

with the following subcomponents:

 Events Receiver: Responsible for receiving events

with raw data published by the CPEE; stores raw

data in the in the Cloud Storage. XMPP protocol is

applied.

 Real Time Monitoring: Show the actual status of

process instances, Uses the same UI as Process

Designer in order to have the same look and feel,

Allows identification and tracking of the process

instances.

 Monitoring Log: Queries finished process

instances; Includes a search engine; Shows

historical data;

 Rules Engine: Allows the definition of rules and

associated actions Evaluates rules based on events

and KPI values throws events and notifications to

the dashboard.

 Performance Management Engine: Allow the

configuration of Key Performance Indicators

related to the manufacturing processes. Aggregates

and analyses data; provides a graphical display in

the dashboard in order to track KPIs.

 Monitoring Services Implements REST Web

services; Provides Meaningful data to the other

components such as the Dashboard.

Based on the data provided by the monitoring

component services, a set of widgets can be included

in a dashboard in order to create a holistic

monitoring environment.

5 DASHBOARD PORTAL: A CASE

EXAMPLE OF PROCESSES

MANAGEMENT

The application of the dashboard user interface as

designed and developed under ADVENTURE

project to be used intensively to process monitoring

and management. To access this user interface layer,

the user needs to register his/her name and detailed

in favour of his/her company within the VF. After

registering in dashboard portal, the user will get a

user name and password to be used to access the

portal. The user roles and access rights are also can

be defined by the VF broker in order to control the

information flow and confidentiality among the VF

partners, potential new companies, suppliers,

customer and the broker. For example, the VF

broker might access all the necessary information to

execute the VF processes successfully, whereas VF

partner might have limited access to the process

information within dashboard portal and so on.

Figure 4 displays the login page of the dashboard

portal.

Figure 4: User login page within dashboard portal.

After successful registration and login the user can

access the dashboard portal and visualize his/her

updated information. Figure 5 displays the overall

view of the dashboard portal. From Figure 5, it is

noticed that each widget displays the required

process information using different formats such as

maps, graphs, texts, tables, etc. Each widget has its

own functionality and levels. In order to get detailed

information from each of the widgets, a user might

need to navigate different levels within a widget.

This dashboard portal consists of 13 widgets

such as processes, smart objects, process instances,

resources, virtual production plan, alerts, message

boards, etc., based on different information content

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Figure 5: Overall display of dashboard user interface

portal.

as required to execute the VF. For instance,

processes widget contains the information related to

process design, process simulation, process

optimization, process adaptation, etc., as necessary

to design and execute any VF process. Figure 6

displays a snap shot of processes widget within the

dashboard portal. This widget contains the necessary

process information such as process flow chart using

BPMN (business process model and notation), all

the processes used in a specific virtual factory

environment (simulation, optimization, forecasting,

etc.,), etc.

Figure 6: Processes widget snap shot within the dashboard

user interface portal.

Figure 7: Alerts widget snap shot within the dashboard

user interface portal.

Another example snap shot of a widget named

‘Alerts’ can be presented as in Figure 7, where

various alerts related to different VF processes are

displayed. These alerts are used to get status update

of different processes that are executing during the

VF runtime environment. The alerts can be in the

form of message such as overdue tasks, pending

tasks, task failure, tasks over budgets, etc. From

these status updates VF broker and/or partners are

able to monitor their corresponding processes and to

take necessary measures to manage the processes

that are eventually contributes to minimize risks or

abnormalities.

6 CONCLUSIONS

The virtual factory is a concept that integrates a

group of manufacturing companies with the

objective to achieve pre-identified business

opportunity. Usually, in this type of business

network companies with similar product portfolios

and expertizes are collaborate with each other for

sharing valuable resources and skills for mutual

benefits. This collaboration cannot be successful

until and unless it’s associated business processes

are monitored and managed properly. An effort is

initiated within this research study to monitor VF

business processes through dashboard user interface.

This user interaction layer provides necessary

technical supports to visualize the monitored

data/information within VF processes.

The process monitoring component as presented

in this research highlights briefly its associated sub-

components and their functionalities, which

contribute to trigger an effective and efficient

process monitoring. This component provides

process visualization that is applicable to managing

VF business environment. It focuses on meaningful

monitored data and control functionalities that allow

an up-to-date, real-time information repository. All

the data or information is accessed as user friendly

as possible and displayed over the dashboard portal.

The dashboard portal features state-of-the-art

business intelligence and provides data visualization,

user interfaces and menus to support VF partners to

execute collaborative processes. It presents the high

level process widgets as used to monitor and manage

the virtual factory processes. Each of the widgets

functions based on the user requirements and

contains specific information repository according to

its predefined functionality. All the widgets which

are the integrated part of the dashboard portal

execute required functionalities and visualized the

VisualizationFunctionalityofVirtualFactories-AnEnhancementtoCollaborativeBusinessProcessManagement

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expected process information over the dashboard. In

addition to, this portal provides an easy way to

visualize the status information of the VF processes

in real-time business environment.

Process visualization over the dashboard portal

provides critical operational metrics (e.g. key

performance indicators) required to manage virtual

factories. Advanced visualizations with quality

graphics offer information updates that bring the

process data to life with clarity. The interactive

dashboard portal supports the flexibility to mould

the data around unique business objectives in real-

time through an intuitive graphical interface. This

research highlights the necessity and reliability of a

dashboard portal which is under developmental

stage and will be completed in future research

approach. The current dashboard portal is tested

upon by using fake data, which will be validated in

future with the real data from a case business

network.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to acknowledge the co-

funding of the European Commission in NMP

priority of the Seventh RTD Framework Programme

(2007-13) for the ADVENTURE project (ADaptive

Virtual ENterprise ManufacTURing Environment),

Ref. 285220. The authors also acknowledge the

valuable collaboration provided by the project team

during the research work.

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