Infrastructure developments for agile virtual enterprises

Abstract

Agility is an important requirement for successful organizations in periods of market turbulence and largely unpredictable socio-economic changes. Agility in a virtual enterprise depends not only on the skills of its member enterprises but also on the characteristics of its supporting infrastructure. In this paper, various requirements and approaches for agility support during the full VE life cycle are presented and topics requiring further research are identified. Finally, two practical application scenarios are introduced and learned lessons presented.

Genetic algorithm for collaboration cost optimization-oriented partner selection in virtual enterprises

“…VE modelling: this research mainly aims at how to describe rigorously the organization formation and its run-time management mechanism of VE, e.g. dynamic alliance (Ip et al 2003), collaborative network organizations (Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh 2003), virtual organizations (Camarinha-Matos et al 2005), non-hierarchical regional production networks (Fischer et al 2004), etc., and how to formally define the competence of candidate partners and relationships between these partners, e.g. VEM/VERAM (Tølle and Vesterager 2004), competence cell (Fischer et al 2004), ontology-based approach (Ljubicˇet al 2005), etc.…”

Embedding Interoperability in System of Systems: Definition and Characterization of Fundamental Requirements

“…This first formalization considers only two requirements that defines interoperability and that are existing in SoS. From a Collaborative Network Organizations point of view, it would be interesting to decompose and specify these two requirements for Virtual Organization [31] where autonomy and reversibility take a preponderant part in consequence of its temporary aspect (creation on business opportunity, operation, disassembling). Furthermore, it will be essential, to consider other requirements.…”

Dynamic Virtual Organizations, or Not so Dynamic?

“…Although the potential advantages of the Virtual Organizations are well known at the conceptual level [3], [7], their practical implantation is still far from the expectations. In order to leverage the potential benefits of the agile VElVa paradigm, there is a need for flexible and generic infrastructures to support the full life cycle of the ValVE, i.e.…”

“…Inter-enterprise cooperation is then performed via the interaction through these layers. Examples of this approach are early efforts in VE infrastructures, as represented by the NIIIP [11], PRODNET [3], [7], or VEGA [18J projects, that aimed at designing open platforms to support the basic information exchange and coordination needs in industrial virtual enterprises.…”