A Business Process Modelling Approach to Improve OEM and Supplier Collaboration

Nowadays, Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) are facing fast changes in technological advancement.
These changes encourage them to be more innovative and to
offer their Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) quality
products with ever shorter deadlines, which is not an easy task.
This project (BENEFITS) aims to provide innovative solutions
to keep the most exploitable SME’s skills within its local regions.
This paper focuses on Business Process Modeling (BPM) and
process interactions during the development phases of innovative products.
Due to the specific needs and requirements in terms of
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)-based solutions for
SMEs and OEMs, this work explores the relationship between
them and their suppliers, based on ICT technologies and focuses on SMEs adoption of PLM. Such relationship needs the
Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) for representing all tasks that must be done for the collaborative
process planning. Two existing information models (NIST and
PPRO) serve as an information model to investigate the way of
implementing design processes in the context of PLM.