A Review of Collaborative Manufacturing Network Models

Tough competition in the current global economies has forced manufacturing enterprises, especially small and medium manufacturing enterprises (SMMEs) to collaborate with other companies to survive. They strive to manage their products to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction at a competitive price in a timely manner with the best quality. Collaborative models covering part of the whole production process have been developed providing advantages to the participating companies. Integration of these current collaborative models into a holistic collaborative manufacturing model could provide operational cost savings as well as significantly increasing competitive advantage. However, there is no current review which provides a comprehensive picture of such integration. Therefore, this study aims to provide a thorough literature review of the current collaborative models, their advantages and their collaborative components which are used to support the collaboration process. Four areas of collaborative models namely; collaborative forecasting, collaborative design and product development, collaborative manufacturing and collaborative distribution are discussed. The majority of previous works tend to overlook combinations of collaborative models in the concerned aspects. Hence, future research opportunities to bring those areas more closely linked to each other is proposed so that manufacturing enterprises can take maximum benefit from all of the current models of collaborative manufacturing.