DME — Distributed Manufacturing Enterprise Modeling, Towards an Ontological Approach

The context of our research is the distribution of manufacturing systems associated with the emergence of new types of organization (Virtual or Extended Enterprise, Holonic Manufacturing Systems, D-CIM…) which tend to distribute activities, competence, responsibilities and decision making capacities of the enterprise on units having a high level of autonomy. The study of these types of organization lead us to propose and define the DME (Distributed Manufacturing Enterprise), a conceptual framework for a knowledge based modeling of distributed manufacturing systems. Then, we present the principal behavioral and descriptive knowledge reference sets which participate to an ontological definition of the DME. Finally, we conclude on perspectives concerning the elaboration of a formal modeling framework of the distributed manufacturing systems.