The development of an ERP application within a computer integrated manufacturing laboratory

Enterprise control applications are becoming more and more complex, exploiting distributed object technology in multi-tier architectures. For educational purposes, the development of a manufacturing control laboratory that may emphasize the new control techniques and the over-all integration of the system activities with business processes is a complex and challenging task. In the paper, an educational enterprise application that integrates the ERP concept together with a Flexible Manufacturing System in a Computer Integrated Laboratory is presented. It contains modularized, distributed subsystems in configurable and maintainable software, covering the business processes, from the customer order, to planned order dispatch. The software architecture contains the ERP components that are implemented using Enterprise Java Beans, deployed in a J2EE application server. It enables transactions with the business environment, shop-floor system and the database. The application is conceptually designed and analyzed using a visual model developed in Unified Modeling Language.