Infrastructures for Virtual Enterprises : Networking Industrial Enterprises IFIP TC5 WG5.3 / PRODNET Working Conference on Infrastructures for Virtual Enterprises (PRO-VE’99) October 27–28, 1999, Porto, Portugal

The area of virtual organizations, and industrial virtual enterprises in particular, is attracting a large and growing interest both in terms of the research and development and the implementation of new business practices. An ever-increasing number of international projects and national initiatives have been launched recently. Most of the earlier efforts are focused on the development of supporting infrastructures, although more and more initiatives now pursue the exploitation of this concept in business terms. Being a recent research and development area, and in spite of the mentioned interest, there is a lack of a structured and comprehensive text that can be used as a reference source. Most available literature is dispersed in several conference proceedings, journals, and book chapters. This book represents an attempt towards such structured text. Although the book was prepared in the framework of PRO-VE'99, a working conference on infrastructures for virtual enterprises organized by the Esprit project PRODNET II and IFIP, it has the goal of covering more generic VE requirements and addressing several other approaches and important aspects in this paradigm. The growing interest in virtual organizations by both the research and industry sectors is the main motivation behind compiling this collection of original contributions as an introduction to this subject. The book primarily addresses the design and development of infrastructures for industrial Virtual Enterprises (VEs); however, the architecture described and several of the tools and design approaches presented are generic enough to be applied to other kinds of virtual organizations. The key areas described in the book include: Reference architectures; Safe communications; Distributed information management; Coordination and workflow; Distributed business processes management; Standards for electronic data interchange; Partners search and VE design and creation; VE configuration and modeling; Inter-operation among technologies; and Integration and reengineering of legacy systems.£/LIST£ In complement to the technological aspects, the social and organizational impacts are also analyzed and a set of recommendations is included. To cover the main technical issues, the book first describes the details of the architecture and the framework developed within the ESPRIT project PRODNET II. Second, to broaden the scope, the book covers several other alternative development approaches. As such, the book is divided into four parts. The first two parts present the work carried out and the innovative results reached within the PRODNET project. Part I provides an introduction to the main VE concepts and requirements, and Part II addresses the PRODNET approach and solutions. Part III of the book is based on a number of selected contributions from several other advanced international research and development projects. Finally, Part IV summarizes the achievements and suggests directions for future research and development. Although the book is prepared in the framework of the PRO-VE'99 conference and is composed of multi-author chapters, all chapters in Parts I, II, and IV are carefully edited for technical accuracy and uniform style of presentation, in order to avoid the typical redundancies found in proceedings books and to facilitate its sequential reading as a textbook. Part III, however, has the usual structure found in proceedings books. Due to current advances in information and communication technology, the base support environments required for the development of VEs now exist. Therefore, the transition from concepts to real systems has become a reality. This book provides a timely approach to such developments. Infrastructure for Virtual Enterprises is essential reading for researchers and engineering students in virtual enterprises (production engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering), as well as for engineers and practitioners in manufacturing systems organization and planning. Front Matter....Pages i-xi Front Matter....Pages 1-1 The Virtual Enterprise Concept....Pages 3-14 Tendencies and General Requirements for Virtual Enterprises....Pages 15-30 Federated Information Management Requirements for Virtual Enterprises....Pages 31-48 Coordination and Configuration Requirements in a Virtual Enterprise....Pages 49-64 Communication Infrastructure Requirements in a VE....Pages 65-76 Socio-Organizational Requirements for a VE....Pages 77-94 Front Matter....Pages 95-95 The PRODNET Goals and Approach....Pages 97-108 The PRODNET Architecture....Pages 109-126 Design of the Federated Information Management Architecture for PRODNET....Pages 127-146 PRODNET Coordination Module....Pages 147-166 The PRODNET Communication Infrastructure....Pages 167-186 Support for Electronic Data Interchange....Pages 187-208 Step Support for Virtual Enterprises....Pages 209-218 Production Planning and Control in a Virtual Enterprise....Pages 219-232 Product Data Management....Pages 233-240 Distributed Business Process Management....Pages 241-258 Selection of Partners for a Virtual Enterprise....Pages 259-278 The PRODNET Demonstrator....Pages 279-290 Front Matter....Pages 291-291 A Framework for Distributed Information Management in the Virtual Enterprise: The Vega Project....Pages 293-306 A Design Process Model to Support Concurrent Project Development in Networks of SMEs....Pages 307-318 Front Matter....Pages 291-291 PerDiS: An Infrastructure for Cooperative Engineering in Virtual Enterprise....Pages 319-332 SMEs in the Virtual Enterprise — LOGSME Enables it Support....Pages 333-342 Implementing Internet Enabled Virtual Enterprises Using Collaborative Agents....Pages 343-352 Agent Communication for Scheduling in the Extended Enterprise....Pages 353-364 A Framework for Improving the Quality of Operation in a Virtual Enterprise....Pages 365-376 A Brazilian Case of VE Coordination....Pages 377-386 A Virtual Enterprise Model, as Proposed Within Project ICIV Aimed at Supporting Networked SMEs....Pages 387-398 Supply Chain Management Based on Market Mechanism in Virtual Enterprise....Pages 399-408 The Value System Designer — An Infrastructure for Building the Virtual Enterprise....Pages 409-420 An Electronic Market Architecture for the Formation of Virtual Enterprises....Pages 421-432 Automating Partner Selection for a Virtual Organization....Pages 433-448 Definition of a Generic Capability Model for Extended Enterprise design for Manufacture....Pages 449-460 Building the Extended Enterprise on Telework, a Case Study....Pages 461-470 Virtual Organisations and the Web Site Resource....Pages 471-480 Front Matter....Pages 481-481 Infrastructures for VE: A Summary of Achievements....Pages 483-490 Further Developments in Virtual Enterprises....Pages 491-496 Back Matter....Pages 497-497