ABSTRACT
The third leg of the collaboration process is on-line, real-time information from production and logistics activities that is used to confirm and track processes in compliance with collaborative agreements. This process is twoway communication. As demand information is provided to upstream partners, their commitment confirmation process comes back to the host. Information is generated and used by the processes to view two separate aspects of the collaborative process. The first is the general issuance of information to define the product, batch size, due date, batch recipe, shipment routing, warehouse location, bill of material information, and so on. This is the information that production managers require to get their job done. Along the way, other information is generated as a result of production, including quality assurance information, actual quantities produced vs. planned amounts, laboratory batch test information, storage location, shipment information, lot numbers, and so forth. The second use of this data is to confirm that production processes and quantities have occurred in accordance with expectations.
