DOI 10.1007/s00170-004-2224-2 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2006) 27: 619–624 J. Cecil · S. Davidson · A. Muthaiyan A distributed internet-based framework for manufacturing planning Received: 22 August 2002 / Accepted: 21 April 2004 / Published online: 23 February 2005  Springer-Verlag London Limited 2005 Abstract Manufacturing organizations worldwide are re- inventing their product development practices in an effort to satisfy changing customer requirements. In the context of these changes influencing the manufacturing community, there is a need to develop frameworks, architectures, and methods to facilitate the creation, implementation, and functioning of vir- tual enterprises (VEs). This paper presents an Internet-based framework, which supports distributed process planning activ- ities in the context of a VE. Typically, in a VE, the enterprise partners are distributed, and possess diverse skills and het- erogeneous software resources, which employ heterogeneous computing platforms. Using the developed approach, physi- cally distributed product development partners can collaborate virtually via the Internet and integrate their life-cycle product development activities through seamless information exchange. In this framework, the distributed manufacturing resources com- municate with each other via the Internet inter-ORB protocol (IIOP) using an object request broker (ORB) at each distributed site. Keywords Distributed manufacturing · Internet collaboration · Virtual enterprises · Distributed process planning 1 Introduction and background This paper is organized into several sections. In Sect. 1, the problem statement and research objective are identified. In Sect. 2, a literature review of distributed collaborative ap- proaches and planning techniques is provided. Section 3 is an overview of the developed methodology and includes a discus- J. Cecil (✉) · S. Davidson Virtual Enterprise Engineering Laboratory (VEEL), Industrial Engineering Department, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA E-mail: jcecil@nmsu.edu A. Muthaiyan Cisco Systems, Inc., Milpitas, CA 95035, USA sion of a prototype system implementation. Section 4 is the conclusion. A key problem in the manufacturing environment is the issue of integrating distributed resources that accomplish automated product and process designs. Product design activities typic- ally involve proposing, conceptualizing and detailing products, such that they satisfy customer requirements. Process design in- volves the design of manufacturing, testing and service plans to support the transformation of the product designs into the pre- determined final form. The concept of a VE is being adopted by numerous manufacturing organizations worldwide as it enables a diverse group of potential enterprise partners to come together and respond rapidly to fast-changing customer requirements. Using a virtual-enterprise-oriented framework, manufacturing organizations and partners can become more agile, collaborate with globally distributed partners and manufacture cost-effective products in a timely manner. In this context, there is a vital need to design and develop methods and computer-based frameworks, which will support the realization of VEs. In today’s evolving global economy, rapid technological advances in distributed col- laboration have been achieved with the emergence of the Internet as a powerful integration vehicle. The virtual enterprises of to- day and tomorrow will be geographically distributed, composed of diverse partners (from different organizations, each possess- ing expertise and resources for a specific function in the product development life-cycle) and may use software resources which run on heterogeneous computing platforms and are implemented Fig. 1. A virtual enterprise