ARUM

The ARUM project aimed to improve planning and control systems for the manufacturing of complex, small-lot products, such as aircraft, aircraft interiors, and ships. Producing aircraft is incomparable to producing large-quantity products such as cars or computers. A car manufacturer makes a relatively small investment in design and production ramp-up (the phase between designing a prototype and smooth production of the final product line), compared to the number of cars it eventually sells. A company like Airbus faces a similar investment, even though it will only sell a small number of aircraft of the same design. Ships and aircraft are often produced in batches as small as 3 to 5, or are even completely customized. Small-lot manufacturers thus need ICT solutions and tools to speed up their learning curve, allowing a smoother transit from design to production. They simply cannot learn from mistakes at the beginning of a series, but must get it right on the very first model.

ARUM resulted in an intelligent Enterprise Service-Based platform (i-ESB). The platform consisted of a service-based architecture with a knowledge-based Multi-Agent System. The i-ESB platform gathers information from sources such as sensors and resource management systems, giving decision makers and planners better insight into and control over the design-to-production process. Also, time-, cost- and risk-analysis takes place within the platform. The project had a double approach, making use of both prediction (in the pre-planning phase) and real-time control (in the production phase).