*** 9628949 Malone This grant provides funding for research leading to the establishment of a knowledge base for agile manufacturing. The purpose of the knowledge base will be to collect and disseminate knowledge about agile manufacturing and other agile business practices. The project will develop conceptual methodologies and software tools to help gather, codify, organize, and distribute information on agile manufacturing practices. The primary objectives of this research are to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach and to develop the tools and methods to expand and maintain an agility knowledge base. This research will build on the Process Handbook project, which is developing methodologies for analyzing business processes and an on-line repository of business process descriptions, and the Intelligent Information Infrastructure Project, which is developing tools for facilitating large scale electronic discussions and for accumulating bodies of knowledge and experience. If successful, this research will augment ongoing activities in the area of agile manufacturing. It should enable the collection of information from several agile manufacturing projects and provide for the dissemination of that information within the projects themselves and to industry seeking to implement agile practices. The overall objective of the agile manufacturing projects is to increase the productivity and profitability of U.S. industry. ***
