Sharing Manufacturing Information
in Virtual Enterprises

Martin Hardwick†, David L. Spooner†, Tom Rando†† and K. C. Morris†††

† Laboratory for Industrial Information Infrastructure
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, New York 12180-3590

†† General Dynamics
Electric Boat Division
76 Eastern Point Road
Groton, Connecticut 06340-4948

††† National Institute of Standards and Technology
Building 220, Room A127
Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899-0001

Abstract: Recent advances in communications technology are making it possible for manufacturing corporations to transmit data to each other in fractions of a second. However, if the corporations use different tools, understanding of the data may be delayed for weeks or months while employees purchase and understand new tools. This paper describes ongoing research into an information infrastructure that seeks to use standards (formal and defacto) to reduce the problems that occur when corporations want to use different tools to process each others data.