This paper was presented at the 32nd Annual IEEE International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC) within the Industrial Experience in Embedded Systems Design (IEESD 2008) workshop. The conference was held in Turku (Finland) from the 28 July 2008 to the 1 August 2008.

Abstract: Responding to the dynamic requirements of the changing market and optimising costs are two challenges faced by corporate manufacturing plants globally. In order to be agile, modern manufacturing plants employ optimized supply chain mechanisms to reduce the response time of the market needs. However bringing changes to the shop floor after a production is planned is costly. In this paper we demonstrate how Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) driven approaches offer the flexibility to adapt manufacturing plants based on a dynamic production plan in close cooperation with a backend system. The methods discussed were deployed on a prototype test rig and integrated with SAP ERP. The results introduce dynamic behaviour of the production plan by adapting to the changing nature of the shop floor, and at the same time, providing the real time status of the machines to the enterprise services which optimize further the production plan dynamically.