E-Business and Virtual Enterprises: Managing Business-to-Business Cooperation (IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology (56))

The fast progress in computer networks and their wide availability complemented with on one hand the "explosion" of the mobile computing and on the other hand the trends in the direction of ubiquitous computing, act as powerful enablers for new forms of highly dynamic collaborative organizations and emergence of new business practices. The first efforts in virtual enterprises (VE) were strongly constrained by the need to design and develop horizontal infrastructures aimed at supporting the basic collaboration needs of consortia of enterprises. Even pilot projects that were focused on specific business domains were forced to first develop some basic infrastructures before being able to develop their specific business models. Nowadays, although there is still a need to consolidate and standardize the horizontal infrastructures, the focus is more and more directed to the development of new vertical business models and the corresponding support tools. At the same time, in the earlier R&D projects, the attention was almost exclusively devoted to the operation phase of the VE life cycle, while now there are more activities addressing the creation phase, developing mechanisms to support the rapid formation of new virtual organizations for new business opportunities. In order to complete the life cycle, there is a need to also invest on support for VE dissolution. Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Will the Organisation Disappear? The Challenges of the New Economy and Future Perspectives....Pages 3-20 A New Paradigm for the next Century: The Task Oriented Job Market....Pages 21-28 E-Diagnosis: Knowledge Management and Organizational Change in Virtual Times....Pages 29-36 A Diary Using Fuzzy Sets....Pages 37-44 Front Matter....Pages 45-45 Infrastructure for the Advanced Virtual Enterprise: A Report Using a Brazilian-Based Example....Pages 47-62 Linking Smes’ Clusters: A View of the Information Infrastructure....Pages 63-70 Working Efficiently with the Service Industries....Pages 71-78 VE Infrastructures Requirements for Cooperation and Knowledge Sharing....Pages 79-86 Front Matter....Pages 87-87 Supporting Agility in Virtual Enterprises....Pages 89-104 The SACE-CSCW Framework: An Infrastructure to Support Virtual Enterprises and Concurrent Engineering Processes....Pages 105-112 Design of a Computer-Supported Cooperative Environment for Small and Medium Enterprises....Pages 113-126 Environment for Design and Analysis of System Integration....Pages 127-134 Front Matter....Pages 135-135 Requirements for an Agent Based Information System Supporting Variably Coupled Networked Enterprises....Pages 137-144 Federated Multi-Agent Scheduling in Virtual Enterprises....Pages 145-156 The Netman Agent-Based Architecture for E-Business in Network Organizations....Pages 157-166 A Mobile-Agent Based Architecture for Virtual Enterprises....Pages 167-174 Front Matter....Pages 175-175 Supporting Information Access Rights and Visibility Levels in Virtual Enterprises....Pages 177-192 A Virtual Project House Infrastructure for Distributed Development Processes....Pages 193-202 The Holonic Paradigm as a New Metaphor for the Coordination Problem of Virtual Enterprises....Pages 203-210 Protocol-Based Cooperation in a Virtual Manufacturing Organization....Pages 211-218 Front Matter....Pages 219-219 Agent-Based Infrastructure of Supply Chain Network Management....Pages 221-232 A Distributed Framework for Collaborative Supply Network Integration....Pages 233-243 New Tools for Multi-Stage Supply Chains....Pages 245-250 Supply Chain Management and Distributed Manufacturing in the Automotive Industry....Pages 251-258 Front Matter....Pages 259-259 Action Research: The Formation of a Manufacturing Virtual Industry Cluster....Pages 261-268 Exploitation of Business Opportunites: The Role of the Virtual Enterprise Broker....Pages 269-280 Agent-Based Brokerage for Virtual Enterprise Creation in the Moulds Industry....Pages 281-290 Front Matter....Pages 291-291 Logistics Support to Electronic Commerce in Brazil: Trends and Constraints....Pages 293-302 A Survey on the Use of E-Commerce by Brazilian Companies....Pages 303-310 Electronic Commerce with XML/EDI in Virtual Enterprises....Pages 311-324 Front Matter....Pages 325-325 The Price-Date-Relationship as a Negotiating Tool in Production Planning and Control....Pages 327-332 Production Planning and Control Information System for the Engineering and Make to Order Environment. A Virtual Enterprise Approach....Pages 333-340 The Design and Development of a Discrete Event Simulation System to Support Virtual Industry Activities....Pages 341-350 Process Support for Virtual Projects in the Construction Sector....Pages 351-358 Front Matter....Pages 359-359 CogNet: Integrated Information and Knowledge Management and Its use in Virtual Organisations....Pages 361-370 An It-Based Framework for Knowledge Management in Networked Organisations....Pages 371-380 Shop Floor Reengineering to Support Agility in Virtual Enterprise Environments....Pages 381-394 A Conceptual Framework for Aggregate Management of Virtual Enterprises....Pages 395-402 Front Matter....Pages 403-403 Virtual Organizations and the Cultural Dimension: Organization Rites in the Consolidation of Telework....Pages 405-412 Virtual Teams and the Organisational Grapevine....Pages 413-424 Front Matter....Pages 403-403 “Moral Infrastructure” and Virtual Enterprises: Ethics as a Competitive Factor for the Internet Commerce in Brazil....Pages 425-432 Informal Networks: Managing the Knowledge within Virtual Enterprises....Pages 433-440 Front Matter....Pages 441-441 A Methodology to Evaluate Enterprises to Become Members of Virtual Industry Clusters....Pages 443-454 An Assessment Model to Analyze Organizational Readiness to Implement Telework Arrangements....Pages 455-464 A Systematic Approach to IPR Definition in Cooperative Projects....Pages 465-476 Front Matter....Pages 477-477 Quality Certification in the Virtual Enterprise: An Objective Tool for Supply Chain Management and Customer Satisfaction....Pages 479-486 An Innovation Coaching Approach to Efficiently Introduce QM-Systems in SMEs....Pages 487-494 Using Knowledge Management to Improve Quality....Pages 495-504 Front Matter....Pages 505-505 A Combined Knowledge and Information Infrastructure to Support Product Development....Pages 507-514 Towards a Virtual Organization: The Rapid Prototyping Portuguese National Network....Pages 515-522 IPDM Systems....Pages 523-530 Back Matter....Pages 531-532 The fast progress in computer networks and their wide availability is complemented with on one hand the "explosion" of mobile computing and on the other hand the trends in the direction of ubiquitous computing. The merger of these technologies acts as a powerful enabler for new forms of highly dynamic collaborative organizations and the emergence of new business practices. Early efforts in the area of virtual enterprises (VE) were strongly constrained by the need to design and develop horizontal infrastructures aimed at supporting the basic collaboration needs of consortia of enterprises. Current trends, however, are more and more directed to the development of new vertical business models and corresponding support tools. In parallel to these efforts, after the first euphoria of the E-commerce wave and the disappointments caused by some simplistic approaches then adopted, there is a shift towards Business-to-Business solutions, as a way to effectively enable E-commerce. This is therefore a time of convergence of the virtual enterprise and e-business developments. This book contains selected articles from PRO-VE 2000, the second working conference on Infrastructures for Virtual Enterprises, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Florianópolis, Brazil in December 2000. The included articles represent relevant examples of the current state of the art in virtual enterprises and support for electronic business. Together with a diversity of application domains, the emphasis is mostly on: the new forms of virtual organizations, support for agility, modeling and execution of distributed business processes, management of enterprise clusters, distributed/federated information management, knowledge management, logistics for electronic commerce, and safe communication. In other words, the book is mainly focused on the management of business-to-business cooperation in virtual and smart organizations. The implantation of electronic business and the virtual enterprise area is not only a technological problem. Therefore, aspects such as socio-organizational transformations, training needs, legal and ethical issues, and intellectual property rights, are also addressed in the book. E-Business and Virtual Enterprises is essential reading for researchers, engineers, practitioners, and engineering students in production engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, organizational science, and industrial sociology