CALS is recently considered as a core government and industry strategy to generate an Integrated Data Environment(IDE), which enable the enterprise share the integrated product life-cycle data through applying the best information technology, process, and standards to achieve efficiency in business.
This paper describes how virtual manufacturing enterprise(VME), which is CALS vision, can be implemented through adopting the formation of current available reference architectures of an IDE being developed by the US DoD CALS IDE and NIIIP and also reviews the terminology and technology underlying VME, especially about STEP as a common data model.
To validate the STEP based system integration approach, the existing problems of steel-plate machining line(SPM) is discussed and the structure of 'To-Be' model of SPM which support enterprise integration is suggested.
