Virtual enterprises are increasingly being used as an organizational strategy for meeting customer needs. Potential benefits of virtual enterprises include increased profits, flexibility, increased customer service, better quality, a quicker time to market, and access to larger markets. However, the brokers that organize these ventures face challenges that arise in five key management activities: select partners, develop communication, develop culture, develop trust, and enhance behavior through motivation. A broker?s ability to overcome the problems in these activities determines the degree to which the benefits are achieved. Examples in the literature point to the possibility that interactive relationships exist between the five management activities. Considering all of these possible associations leads to a complex web of relationships that makes it difficult to determine the overall impact of specific improvements. This research investigates the five management activities and defines the primary relationships between them. The primary relationships are used to develop a conceptual model that brokers can apply as a methodology for systematically developing a virtual enterprise and thereby proactively addressing potential problems. In developing the conceptual model, this research utilizes approaches from other disciplines for addressing similar problems. The application of these approaches results in the use of systems engineering concepts to plan and design a virtual enterprise, the development of a partner selection methodology that incorporates ideas from the supplier performance measurement literature, the development of a pre-partner cultural assessment and post-partner cultural development process that are based on ideas found in the literature on mergers, and the use of project management as a means for coordinating the activities in a virtual enterprise. In addition to the preceding contributions, this research provides a comprehensive view of the characteristics of virtual enterprises. Included in these provisions are a detailed definition process and an extension of the literature to establish a typology of virtual enterprises.

O conceito de Empresas Virtuais vem sendo amplamente discutido no atual contexto de globalização dos mercados e da produção. Uma Empresa Virtual (EV) é uma rede temporária de entidades que se unem para explorar uma oportunidade de negócio, compartilhando competências, custos e acesso ao mercado. Apesar da EV ser composta por várias empresas diferentes, é fundamental gerenciar essa rede como se fosse uma única empresa. No entanto, para formação de EVs voltadas a produtos manufaturados existe uma lacuna na sua fase de operação: a carência de métodos adequados para executar o planejamento e controle da produção. O objetivo deste trabalho é propor um modelo de referência para o planejamento e controle da produção em EV, visando dar suporte a sua operação distribuída, porém de forma integrada. Esse modelo define um conjunto de atividades para o planejamento e controle da produção em EVs, as informações necessárias para realizá-las e a estrutura organizacional responsável pela execução das mesmas. Para elaborar o modelo, são determinadas as características de EVs e de sua gestão da produção, e considerados os processos envolvidos no ciclo de vida de uma EV. Por fim, um exemplo do planejamento e controle da produção em uma EV fictícia é elaborado para ilustrar a utilização do modelo proposto. / The concept of Virtual Enterprises has been widely discussed in the current context of market and production globalization. A Virtual Enterprise (VE) is a temporary enterprise network that joint themselves to exploit a business opportunity by sharing competences, costs and market share. Even though a VE is composed by different enterprises, it is fundamental to manage this network like a single company. However, while forming a VE for manufacturing sector, there is a gap in the operational phase: the lack of appropriated methods to execute the production planning and control. The goal of this work is to propose a reference model for production planning and control in VE, in order to support its distributed operation, but in an integrated way. This model defines a set of activities for the production planning and control in a VE, the required information to perform them and also the organizational model responsible for their execution. To elaborate the model, it was determined the features of VEs and its production management, and also considered the VE lifecycle processes. An example of production planning and control in a fictitious VE is elaborated to illustrate the proposed model utilization.

During the past two decades, increasingly powerful and capable information technologies have made information more accessible and valuable so that it has become the prime resource for business; ahead of the traditional resources of land, labour and capital. Improved information acquisition, usage and distribution has also driven and enabled globalisation. The emergence of the virtual enterprise (VE) is one consequence of changed market conditions and advanced information communications technology (ICT). VE s are characterised by various configurations of networks of collaborating partnerships and intensive ICT linkages. As ICT has become more pervasive, businesses have become increasingly reliant on it for their effective operation so now the question for business strategists is how to create value and sustainable competitive advantage in a virtual world? This thesis offers an answer to that question.This thesis uses rational arguments drawn from a wide variety of research from both the business and ICT disciplines to examine the theoretical foundations of value creation. It explores the development of corporate strategy and value driven sources of competitive advantage from the viewpoints of industrial organisation (IO), the resource based view (RBV) of the firm, innovation, transaction cost economics, network theory and value and supply chains. However, these established strategy theories, whose origins often predate the internet, do not adequately accommodate the expanded roles that information and digital technologies play in creating value in an increasingly digital environment. Alternately, Information Systems research, which is rich in information technology, struggles to accommodate the notion of value as legitimate information systems goal. Virtual organisation (VO) is a new strategic paradigm that is centred on the use of information and ICT to create value. VO is presented as a meta-management strategy that has application in all value oriented organisations. Within the concept of VO, the business model is an ICT based construct that bridges and integrates enterprise strategic and operational concerns.The Virtual Value Creation (VVC) framework is an innovative and novel business model that draws on the concept of virtual organisation. The VVC’s objective is to provide enterprises with a framework to determine their present and potential capability to use available information to create economic value. It owes its inspiration to Porter and Drucker, both of whom emphasised value creation as the legitimate focus for enterprise activity and the source of sustainable competitive advantage. The VVC framework integrates existing and emerging theories to describe the strategic processes and conditions necessary for the exploitation of information in a commercial setting.The VVC framework presently represents a novel and valuable tool that enterprises can use to assess their present and potential use of information to create value in a virtual age.

To satisfy new market requirements, manufacturing industry has shifted from mass production that takes advantage of the scale of production, to quality management that optimizes the internal enterprise functions, to e-manufacturing era that leverage intellectual capital via collaborative innovation. In the same time, the product itself is becoming the most important asset for sustainable business success. Consequently, the effectiveness, efficiency and innovation for the development of the product across the whole product lifecycle are becoming key business factors for manufacturing enterprise to obtain competitive advantages for survival. To tackle such challenges, a new business model called collaborative product services in virtual enterprise is proposed in this paper. The architecture of this new model is developed based on the framework and the application of web service and process management for collaboration product service in virtual enterprise. Indeed, it is hoped that this architecture will lay the foundation for further research and development of effective product lifecycle management in virtually collaborative enterprise environment. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

During the past two decades, increasingly powerful and capable information technologies have made information more accessible and valuable so that it has become the prime resource for business; ahead of the traditional resources of land, labour and capital. Improved information acquisition, usage and distribution has also driven and enabled globalisation. The emergence of the virtual enterprise (VE) is one consequence of changed market conditions and advanced information communications technology (ICT). VE s are characterised by various configurations of networks of collaborating partnerships and intensive ICT linkages. As ICT has become more pervasive, businesses have become increasingly reliant on it for their effective operation so now the question for business strategists is how to create value and sustainable competitive advantage in a virtual world? This thesis offers an answer to that question.This thesis uses rational arguments drawn from a wide variety of research from both the business and ICT disciplines to examine the theoretical foundations of value creation. It explores the development of corporate strategy and value driven sources of competitive advantage from the viewpoints of industrial organisation (IO), the resource based view (RBV) of the firm, innovation, transaction cost economics, network theory and value and supply chains. However, these established strategy theories, whose origins often predate the internet, do not adequately accommodate the expanded roles that information and digital technologies play in creating value in an increasingly digital environment. Alternately, Information Systems research, which is rich in information technology, struggles to accommodate the notion of value as legitimate information systems goal. Virtual organisation (VO) is a new strategic paradigm that is centred on the use of information and ICT to create value. VO is presented as a meta-management strategy that has application in all value oriented organisations. Within the concept of VO, the business model is an ICT based construct that bridges and integrates enterprise strategic and operational concerns.The Virtual Value Creation (VVC) framework is an innovative and novel business model that draws on the concept of virtual organisation. The VVC’s objective is to provide enterprises with a framework to determine their present and potential capability to use available information to create economic value. It owes its inspiration to Porter and Drucker, both of whom emphasised value creation as the legitimate focus for enterprise activity and the source of sustainable competitive advantage. The VVC framework integrates existing and emerging theories to describe the strategic processes and conditions necessary for the exploitation of information in a commercial setting.The VVC framework presently represents a novel and valuable tool that enterprises can use to assess their present and potential use of information to create value in a virtual age.

O conceito de Empresas Virtuais vem sendo amplamente discutido no atual contexto de globalização dos mercados e da produção. Uma Empresa Virtual (EV) é uma rede temporária de entidades que se unem para explorar uma oportunidade de negócio, compartilhando competências, custos e acesso ao mercado. Apesar da EV ser composta por várias empresas diferentes, é fundamental gerenciar essa rede como se fosse uma única empresa. No entanto, para formação de EVs voltadas a produtos manufaturados existe uma lacuna na sua fase de operação: a carência de métodos adequados para executar o planejamento e controle da produção. O objetivo deste trabalho é propor um modelo de referência para o planejamento e controle da produção em EV, visando dar suporte a sua operação distribuída, porém de forma integrada. Esse modelo define um conjunto de atividades para o planejamento e controle da produção em EVs, as informações necessárias para realizá-las e a estrutura organizacional responsável pela execução das mesmas. Para elaborar o modelo, são determinadas as características de EVs e de sua gestão da produção, e considerados os processos envolvidos no ciclo de vida de uma EV. Por fim, um exemplo do planejamento e controle da produção em uma EV fictícia é elaborado para ilustrar a utilização do modelo proposto. / The concept of Virtual Enterprises has been widely discussed in the current context of market and production globalization. A Virtual Enterprise (VE) is a temporary enterprise network that joint themselves to exploit a business opportunity by sharing competences, costs and market share. Even though a VE is composed by different enterprises, it is fundamental to manage this network like a single company. However, while forming a VE for manufacturing sector, there is a gap in the operational phase: the lack of appropriated methods to execute the production planning and control. The goal of this work is to propose a reference model for production planning and control in VE, in order to support its distributed operation, but in an integrated way. This model defines a set of activities for the production planning and control in a VE, the required information to perform them and also the organizational model responsible for their execution. To elaborate the model, it was determined the features of VEs and its production management, and also considered the VE lifecycle processes. An example of production planning and control in a fictitious VE is elaborated to illustrate the proposed model utilization.

A Virtual Enterprise (VE) is a temporal alliance between two or more Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) geographically dispersed, which collaborate together in order to reach new business opportunities that would be unreachable in other ways. It is a business collaboration paradigm that aims at responding to the uncertainty and instability of the current global economy. VE requires support for electronic contract management, since electronic contracts formalize the agreements between the participating enterprises and coordinate their behavior. Although there is an abundance of previous work on electronic contracts, there is a lack of models and approaches related to VE contracts, which have an intrinsic dynamic and flexible nature, since they regulate independent behavior of diverse parties, and also aim at high automation in the formation and execution. This thesis aims at contributing to the VE contracting challenge. It includes a state of the art survey that identifies useful technologies and describes the most significant or relevant approaches. The state of the art survey identifies three main contracting issues: Contract specification, which determines the structure, content and performance of the contract; deontic logic norms, which represent the contractual interactions between the parties in terms of obligations, prohibitions and permissions; and ontology, which provides contracts with semantic meaning and allows interoperability. Furthermore, a simple XML-based VE Contract Representation Language and a Layered Contract Ontology, which provides common vocabulary to the contractual parties, are presented. Finally a VE scenario, including the associated contract, is described as an illustrative example.

Virtual Enterprise (VE) is an organizational collaboration concept which provides a competitive edge in the globalized business environment. The life cycle of a VE consists of four stages i.e. opportunity identification (Pre-Creation), partner selection (Creation), operation and dissolution. The success of VEs depends upon the efficient execution of their VE-lifecycles along with knowledge enhancement for the partner enterprises to facilitate the future formation of efficient VEs. This research aims to study the different issues which occur in the VE lifecycle and provides a platform for the formation of high performance enterprises and VEs. In the pre-creation stage, enterprises look for suitable partners to create their VE and to exploit a market opportunity. This phase requires explicit and implicit information extraction from enterprise data bases (ECOS-ontology) for the identification of suitable partners. A description logic (DL) based query system is developed to extract explicit and implicit information and to identify potential partners for the creation of the VE. In the creation phase, the identified partners are analysed using different risks paradigms and a cooperative game theoretic approach is used to develop a revenue sharing mechanism based on enterprises inputs and risk minimization for optimal partner selection. In the operation phases, interoperability remains a key issue for seamless transfer of knowledge information and data. DL-based ontology mapping is applied in this research to provide interoperability in the VE between enterprises with different domains of expertise. In the dissolution stage, knowledge acquired in the VE lifecycle needs to be disseminated among the enterprises to enhance their competitiveness. A DL-based ontology merging approach is provided to accommodate new knowledge with existing data bases with logical consistency. Finally, the proposed methodologies are validated using the case study. The results obtained in the case study illustrate the applicability and effectiveness of proposed methodologies in each stage of the VE life cycle.

In order to compete with the global giants, enterprises are concentrating on their core competencies and collaborating with organizations that compliment their skills and core activities. The current trend is to develop temporary alliances of independent enterprises, in which companies can come together to share skills, core competencies and resources. However, knowledge sharing and communication among multidiscipline companies is a complex and challenging problem. In a collaborative environment, the meaning of knowledge is drastically affected by the context in which it is viewed and interpreted; thus necessitating the treatment of structure as well as semantics of the data stored in enterprise repositories. Keeping the present market and technological scenario in mind, this research aims to propose tools and techniques that can enable companies to assimilate distributed information resources and achieve their business goals.

Com a globalização da economia as empresas estão buscando diferentes formas de cooperação para aumentarem a sua competitividade. Neste contexto, o conceito de Empresa Virtual está sendo pesquisado como uma alternativa para aumentar os ganhos dentro de uma cooperação entre empresas. No entanto, o tipo de cooperação Empresa Virtual corresponde a uma área de pesquisa na qual diferentes mecanismos estão sendo explorados para a sua consolidação. A formação de uma rede estável entre empresas é difundida por vários projetos europeus como uma condição necessária para o surgimento sistemático de Empresas Virtuais. A esta rede estável dá-se o nome de Organização Virtual. O sucesso da formação e gerência de uma Empresa Virtual com as empresas que pertencem à uma Organização Virtual depende diretamente do processo de integração entre as mesmas. O objetivo deste trabalho consiste em aplicar conceitos e ferramentas difundidos pela área de Integração de Empresas na formação e gerência de uma Empresa Virtual, dentro de uma Organização Virtual, visando a integração dos parceiros. Para tanto, foi realizada uma adaptação do conceito de modelo de empresa para a representação formalizada dos parceiros da Organização Virtual e um detalhamento das atividades do ciclo de vida de uma Empresa Virtual, entre as quais encontram-se as atividades do processo de integração. Um exemplo de organização Virtual foi elaborado para validar a aplicação da proposta. / With the economy globalization, enterprises are looking for different forms of cooperation aiming increase their competitiveness. In this context, the concept of virtual enterprise is being researched as an alternative to increase the gains inside a cooperation among enterprises. However, the type of cooperation called virtual enterprise corresponds to a research area in which different mechanisms are being explored for its consolidation. The formation of a stable network among enterprises is diffused by several European projects as a necessary condition for the systematic appearance of virtual enterprises. This stable network is called Virtual organization. The success of the formation and management of a virtual enterprise whose enterprises that belong to a virtual organization depends directly on the integration process among the same ones. The objective of this work consists of applying concepts and tools diffused by the area of enterprise Iitegration in the formation and management of a virtual enterprise, inside of a virtual organization, seeking the partners' integration. For this, an adaptation of the concept of enterprise model was accomplished for the formalized representation of the virtual organization partners and a specification of the activities of the life cicle of a virtual enterprise, among these there are the activities of the integration process. An example of virtual owas elaborated to validate the application of the proposal.