Design of a Global Decision Support System for a manufacturing SME: Towards participating in Collaborative Manufacturing Hao W. Lin a,n , Sev V. Nagalingam b , Swee S. Kuik b , Tomohiro Murata c a Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen Graduate School, Rm. 424, Bld. D, HIT Campus, Xili University Town, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, P.R. China b School of Advanced Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering, University of South Australia, Australia c Graduate School of Information, Production and Systems, Waseda University, Japan article info Article history: Received 15 February 2007 Accepted 5 July 2011 Available online 22 August 2011 Keywords: Collaborative Manufacturing Collaborative networks Global Decision Support System System interoperability Multi-objective optimisation abstract This paper discusses the conceptual design of a Global Decision Support System for a manufacturing Small or Medium Enterprise (SM/E), which actively participates in Collaborative Manufacturing. In order to implement the proposed concept, a Web Services based system architecture is proposed to offer maximum interoperability between all the distributed participants of a Collaborative Manufactur- ing Network (CMN) and their management information systems. Furthermore, this conceptual design utilises a Collaborative decision-support model that effectively interacts with the decision-makers and the management information systems/tools exist in the network, and provides appropriate support to all necessary decision-making steps towards the attainment of the network’s strategic goals, while making full benefits of the network resources. & 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In recent years, many manufacturing enterprises that are operating worldwide show an interest for Collaborative Manu- facturing (CM). This new business strategy offers manufacturers the critically needed competitive advantages (Camarinha-Matos and Macedo, 2010; Chung et al., 2004; Johansen et al., 2005). CM is a concept that involves the establishment of Collaborative Manufacturing Networks (CMNs) in order to fully exploit the core competencies of every manufacturer within a network. The strategy is aiming to achieve best possible fulfilment of customer demands and improvement of their overall net profit, agility, and competitiveness towards the global market (Danilovic and Winroth, 2005; Kuik et al., 2010). However, CM heavily relies on improved data, information, and knowledge transparency typically a commonly recognised decision-making approach to achieve balanced profits, costs, and risks among the participants (D’Amours et al., 1999; Lagerstrom and Andersson, 2003; Li and Lai, 2005; Zhang et al., 2004). This reliance suggests that an integrated manufacturing decision-support infrastructure is essential for a CMN to successfully deliver the positive outcomes. Enhancing the existing capabilities on supporting the manage- ment and production activities are traditionally restricted to in-house operations and department-oriented operations. Advan- cing to the CM era, a corresponding new generation of manufac- turing systems must also expand their features to administrate collaborative activities between the local enterprise and its business partners within the CMN (Chiu and Lin, 2004; Cil et al., 2005; Perrin et al., 2003). Since, collaborative activities are highly complex and dynamic (Cil et al., 2005; Perrin et al., 2003; Xu et al., 2009), adequate interoperability between manufacturing systems that are distrib- uted across the CMN is essential for the success of this network. To a certain extent, this interoperability issue is not properly addressed by most of the conventional integrated manufacturing systems (Chiu et al., 2006; Lin et al., 2009). Especially these systems are established by closely coupling computer systems with inflexible interfaces that are hard-coded to accommodate the purpose of a Business-to-Business (B2B) relationship. Under a customised interface, these systems fulfil the objectives of infor- mation sharing, and they proved adequate in sustaining the automation of most pre-defined business operations. However, hand-coded interfaces are not readily adaptive to the frequent changes as experienced within a CMN. As a result, participants within the network must invest invaluable resources in perform- ing substantial updates just to maintain the operation of their existing systems. In order to conform to these integration archi- tectures, the system must be commonly endorsed by all business partners to ensure smooth transaction of collaborative manage- ment activities. Furthermore, the schema of shared information and knowledge must be updated accordingly whenever the CMN Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe Int. J. Production Economics 0925-5273/$ - see front matter & 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2011.07.001 n Corresponding author. Tel.: þ86 755 2603 3148. E-mail addresses: h.lin@y.kurenai.waseda.jp (H.W. Lin), sev.nagalingam@unisa.edu.au (S.V. Nagalingam), swee.kuik@unisa.edu.au (S.S. Kuik), t-murata@waseda.jp (T. Murata). Int. J. Production Economics 136 (2012) 1–12