Vo management pilot cases: Virtuelle Fabrik, Orona, Sns

The future competitiveness of European companies will depend to a great extent on their ability to collaborate. Many companies have already recognized that, in order to rival competitors in lower cost economies, they must cooperate with complementary companies and offer extended solutions to their customers. To this end, an increasing number of companies are affiliating themselves with Virtual Breeding Environments (VBEs) and participating in Virtual Organisations (VOs). The topic of providing the necessary information technologies to facilitate this integrated mode of operation has been considered in research for at least a decade (Strader et al. 1998). However, despite this work, there are still many obstacles prohibiting this collaborative business model from being adopted on a larger scale (Corvello and Migliarese 2007). Recognising the practical difficulties faced by industrial companies when operating in VOs, the ECOLEAD research project was undertaken to examine the underlying obstacles and to provide understandable frameworks for sustained collaboration. Beginning with the base theories of collaboration, this research group developed tools and technologies to facilitate the successful management of a network of independent companies. One of the key aspects of this project was the development of relevant Virtual Organisation Monitoring and Control tools and methodologies. When designing these tools particular attention was paid to the defining characteristics of VOs. For instance, ease of access and affordability (Camarinha-Matos 2003) were important requirements, due to the IT capability and scale of the companies typically involved in VOs. Similarly, the speed at which the VO can respond to a business opportunity is recognised as a key determinant of success (Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh 2007) since such opportunities are often short-lived due to the fast pace of modern marketplaces. These key requirements of usability and accessibility were determined to be best served by the internet and accordingly a suite of web-based applications was developed. In this chapter the tools which are considered from this suite are those that support the management activities of Virtual Organizations. These tools are briefly described as follows: • VOMod (VO Model Wizard): The VOMod environment maintains information about the Virtual Organization and its structure. The VO manager models the structure of a particular VO starting from a preconfigured general VO template and following a predefined VO metamodel. • SID (Supporting Indicator Definition): The SID is responsible for keeping Indicator information. Like the VOMod, the SID also consists of an administrative part (database, web application) and a handler, based on Web service interfaces, interacting with the other components. • DI3 (Distributed Indicator Information Integrator) The DI3 component consists of a configurable broker that interacts with a set of informationretrieval components. These components fetch data at various VO member locations. • MAF (Monitor and Finance): The MAF component provides a dashboard for visualizing the information retrieved and stored among the other components of the framework. • DSS (Decision Support System): The Decision Support System for Virtual Organizations (DSS) is dedicated to provide decision support services to the VO manager given the inputs from other components. Figure 1 (Hodik et al. 2007) below displays the main elements of each tool and indicates how the tools interact with each other. (Figure presented) Three real world networks were selected for the initial implementation and testing of the above software. These were 1.) Virtuelle Fabrik, a Swiss-German network of primarily engineering companies 2.) Orona, a Spanish based network that manufactures elevators and associated equipment, and 3.) SNS, an Irish based network of engineering and electronic sub-component manufacturing SMEs. Each of these networks is dealt with in a dedicated section in this chapter and each section is subdivided as follows: • Network Overview: Gives background information on the network. • Definition Phase: Introduces each of the test bed scenarios. • Implementation Phase: Discusses the application of the concepts and tools developed in the ECOLEAD project to the specific VO instances. • Demonstration Phase: Demonstrates the results achieved by the network through the use of the ECOLEAD tools. • Lessons Learned and Next Steps: Details the lessons learned by the test network and outlines what they consider to be the most beneficial next steps for furthering the work.