Abstract—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.

Index Terms—Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), business process modeling, supply chain collaboration, SMEs/OEM, manufacturing.

Cite: Sara Mahdikhah, Mourad Messaadia, David Baudry, Richard Evans, and Anne Louis, "A Business Process Modelling Approach to Improve OEM and Supplier Collaboration," Journal of Advanced Management Science, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 246-253, September 2014. doi: 10.12720/joams.2.3.246-253