Design for manufacture in multi-enterprise partnerships: current status and future directions

To pursue market and technology opportunities effectively, US commercial and defense industries will be relying increasingly on multi-enterprise partnerships. Horizontal partnering combines the strengths of multiple firms in product design, manufacture, after sales support and customer service, in order to launch superior products in the global market. To support effective partnering, new approaches will be needed for integrating the activities of design, planning, and production. It is important to address both the fundamental modeling of design, process planning, and production planning in ways that account for the capabilities of potential manufacturing partners, and the development of optimization procedures to address the underlying decision problems. This paper elaborates on these issues and discusses approaches for addressing them.