INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT KEEPS PARTNERS TRUE TO THEIR MISSION.

MISSION--an international research project to develop and test "modeling and simulation environments for design, planning and operation of globally distributed enterprises"--moved a step closer to success when the three participating regions recently signed their first cooperative agreement.

Approved by the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) Program in 1998, MISSION involves partners from the United States, Japan and the European Union in the building of the software equivalent of a docking station, a generic modeling platform with interfaces that link and integrate distributed models and user-selected simulation tools, such as those for evaluating production scenarios. The platform will support simulations over a range of vantage points, from individual factories to entire supply chains. A distributed supply chain prototype is being built to demonstrate the generic platform.

Under the new pact, the MISSION partners have agreed that any intellectual property created during the course of work will be placed into the public domain. Signing for the United States along with NIST--the regional coordinator of the U.S. team--were seven major U.S. simulation software vendors, two companies, five universities and the Department of Defense's Defense Modeling and Simulation Office.

The IMS Program was initiated by Japan to foster international cooperation on manufacturing research and development. Twenty projects are currently under way, involving over 250 companies and more than 200 research institutes from Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan and the United States.