Collaborative Business Ecosystems and Virtual Enterprises

Towards collaborative business ecosystems Last decade was fertile in the emerging of new collaboration mechanisms and forms of dynamic virtual organizations, leading to the concept of dynamic business ecosystem, which is supported (or induced ?) by the progress of the ubiquitous I pervasive computing and networking. The new technologies, collaborative business models, and organizational forms supported by networking tools "invade" all traditional businesses and organizations what requires thinking in terms of whole systems, i. e. seeing each business as part of a wider economic ecosystem and environment. It is also becoming evident that the agile formation of very dynamic virtual organizations depends on the existence of a proper longer-term "embedding" or "nesting" environment (e. g. regional industry cluster), in order to guarantee certain basic requirements such as trust building ("Trusting your partner" is a gradual and long process); common interoperability, ontology, and distributed collaboration infrastructures; agreed business practices (requiring substantial engineering Ire-engineering efforts); a sense of community ("we vs. the others"), and some sense of stability (when is a dynamic state or a stationary state useful). The more frequent situation is the case in which this "nesting" environment is formed by organizations located in a common region, although geography is not a major facet when cooperation is supported by computer networks.

Klappentext

This book contains selected articles from PRO-VE'02, the third working conference on Infrastructures for Virtual Enterprises, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Sesimbra, Portugal in May 2002. The included articles represent relevant examples of the current state of the art in virtual enterprises and other collaborative and networked organizations, and provide valuable insights on future trends and challenges. The book contents clearly reflect a growing maturation and diversification of the area. Important development directions are well represented, such as: modeling and reference architectures, formation of virtual organizations, including contract management and negotiation, operation support functionalities, infrastructures and interoperability, virtual communities and new collaboration forms, best practices and strategic planning, economic aspects and performance metrics, training and new ways of working.

Inhalt
Technical co-sponsors. Committees and referees. Foreword - Towards collaborative business ecosystems. Part 1: Reference models. 1. Reference Models for Virtual Enterprises; M. Tølle, et al. 2. Towards a Modeling Framework for Networks of SMEs; F. Biennier, et al. 3. Enterprise Engineering - The Basis for Successful Planning of E-Business; R. Jochem. 4. Handling the Complexity of IT-environments with Enterprise Architecture; T. Birkhölzer, J. Vaupel. Part 2: VE Creation Models. 5. A Dynamic Model of Virtual Organizations: Formation and Development; C. Lackenby, H. Seddighi. 6. Initiation of a Globally Networked Project: a Case Study; K. Visuri, et al. 7. In Search of the Right Partner; S. Field, Y. Hoffner. Part 3: Brokerage in Virtual Enterprises. 8. Brokerage Function in Agile/Virtual Enterprise Integration - A Literature Review; P. Ávila, et al. 9. A Framework for Broker Assisted Virtual Enterprises; C. Harbilas, et al. 10. Virtual Enterprise Broker: Processes, Methods and Tools; R. Mejía, A. Molina. Part 4: Contract Management. 11. Managing Contracts in Virtual Project Supply Chains; H. Laurikkala, K. Tanskanen. 12. Managing Contractual Relationship in Virtual Organizations with Electronic Contracting; D. Burgwinkel. 13. Contract Management in Agile Manufacturing Systems; J. Barata, L.M. Camarinha-Matos. Part 5: Negotiation and Contracting. 14. A Proposal on Negotiation Methodology in Virtual Enterprise; T.Kaihara, S. Fujii. 15. Negotiation Protocol Characterization and Mechanisms for Virtual Markets and Enterprises; Y. Hoffner, et al. 16. A Conceptual Framework for B2B Electronic Contracting; S. Angelov, P. Grefen. Part 6: Workflow Management. 17. Towards a Cross-Organizational Workflow Model; K. Schulz, M.E. Orlowska. 18. Integrating a Workflow Engine anda Mof Repository to an Open Service Platform; C.R.M. Silva, et al. 19. Corvette: A Cooperative Workflow Development Experiment; K. Baïna, et al. 20. Inter-Organizational Workflow Management in Virtual Healthcare Enterprises; T. Amin, H.K. Pung. Part 7: Knowledge Management. 21. Knowledge Acquisition for Building and Integrating Product Configurators; A. Felfernig, et al. 22. Towards Ontology-Based Smart Organizations; A. Maedche, P. Weiß. 23. Using Ontologies in Virtual Brainstorming for Business Process Reengineering; A. Galatescu, T. Creceanu. Part 8: Order Planning and Optimization. 24. Distributed Enterprises Configuration: Orders Allocation within Networks of Firms; A. Hammami, et al. 25. Optimization Structures for Supply Chain Management; M.F. Carvalho, P.G. Furtado. 26. An Order Planning System to Support Networked Supply Chains; A. Azevedo, et al. Part 9: Enterprise Modeling Frameworks. 27. Developing an Unified Enterprise Modeling Language (UEML) Requirements and Roadmap; D. Chen, et al. 28. An UML-Based Meta-Language for the QOS-Aware Enterprise Specification of Open Distributed Systems; B. El Ouahidi, et al.