e-Services - a part of the "Digital Factory"

The consulting and planning processes for designing and restructuring facilities are undergoing great changes. In the past, general contractors, management consultants or architectural firms and urban planners carried out these processes. Today, quality-oriented experts from different fields and companies work together efficiently in teams, and are able to react quickly to the demands of the market by using tools such as the internet. The current situation in the area of planning complex production and logistic systems is characterized by time-consuming, cost intensive processes. A number of iterations are required in order to obtain a result that is acceptable to all business partners. Often, the parties who are not active in the planning process are only observers, which means they are not given the chance to include their own goals and restrictions in the planning process. A process is needed, which includes both the customer and the suppliers of the system and, thereby, ensures that the necessary information is communicated. Basic tasks within the scope of the work realizing the »Digital Factory« deal with the link between all the planning processes and connection of all the existing tools and methods for factory planning (e. g. CAD, Simulation, Virtual Reality). At the moment these tasks are limited to the enterprise. The internet gives the opportunity also to involve members of distributed teams into the processes. In particular e-Industrial Services provide a infrastructure for the technical process for dedicated steps of the planning process and define a corresponding business processes. This paper presents an approach for using e-Services within the »Digital Factory«.