Enhancing knowledge and skill chains in manufacturing and engineering

This introductory paper to the volume explains the DIISM problem statement and applies principles of architecture descriptions for evolutionary systems (IEEE 1471-2000) to the information infrastructure for engineering and manufacturing. In our vision, knowledge and skill chains depend on infrastructure systems fulfilling missions in three kinds of environments: the socio-industrial domain of society and its production systems as a whole, the knowledge domain for a scientific discipline, and the sectorial domain, which includes the operational entities (companies, organisational units, engineers, workers) in engineering and manufacturing. The relationships between these different domains are captured in a domain paradigm. For companies, the original scope for infrastructure systems was the factory floor and the engineering office. Recently the scopes of external collaboration and of man-system collaboration have gained importance. Within each of the four identified scopes a system can offer services to different operational levels: operations, development or engineering, and research. The dimensions of scope and service level are briefly explained in relation to the architecting of an infrastructure. Papers are grouped according to their contribution to an infrastructure scenario or to an infrastructure component.