The Potential of Critical E-Applications for Engaging SMEs in E Business: A Provider Perspective

YesAgainst a background of the low engagement of SMEs in e-business this paper investigates the emergence of, and potential for, critical e-applications defined as `an e-business application, promoted by a trusted third party, which engages a significant number of SMEs by addressing an important shared business concern within an aggregation.¿ By a review of secondary data and empirical investigation with service providers and other intermediaries the research shows that such applications can facilitate the e-business engagement of SMEs. There are three key findings, namely: the emergence of aggregation specific e-business applications; the emergence of collaboratively based `one to many¿ business models; and the importance of trusted third parties in the adoption of higher complexity e-business applications by SMEs. Significantly this work takes a deliberately provider perspective and complements the already considerable literature on SME IT adoption from a user and network perspective. In terms of future research the importance of a better conceptual understanding of the impact of complexity on the adoption of IT by SMEs is highlighted

Cloud Manufacturing Model to Optimise Manufacturing Performance

Being predicted as the future of modern manufacturing, cloud-based manufacturing has drawn the attention of researchers in academia and industry. Researches are being done towards transforming every service in to cloud based service-oriented manufacturing mode in the manufacturing industry. There are many challenges that would arise when travelling towards this paradigm shift which is being addressed by researchers, but there are very few researches that concentrate on the elastic capability of cloud. Elastic capability makes this paradigm unique from all the other approaches or technologies. If elasticity is not achievable then the necessity of migrating to cloud is unnecessary. So, it is imperative to identify if at all it is necessary to adopt cloud-based manufacturing mode and discuss the issues and challenges that would arise to achieve elasticity when shifting to this emerging manufacturing paradigm. This research explores the importance of adopting cloud-based manufacturing mode to improve manufacturing performance based on the competitive priorities such as cost, quality, delivery and flexibility and proposes an elasticity assessment tool to be included in the cloud-based manufacturing model for the users to assess the challenges and issues on the realisation of elasticity on the context of manufacturing, which is the novelty of this research. The contribution to knowledge is a clear understanding of the necessity of cloud based elastic manufacturing model in the manufacturing environment for the manufacturing SMEs to gain a competitive advantage by achieving the competitive priorities such as low-cost, high-quality, and on-time delivery. Finally, the research suggests the best combination of manufacturing parameters that has to be emphasised to improve the manufacturing performance and gain a competitive advantage

ICT-based solution approach for collaborative delivery of customised products

© 2016 Taylor & Francis. Growing interest on business collaboration motivates todays industries, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to establish and manage dynamic and non-hierarchical business networks to respond to market opportunities with added business benefits. This business environment requires concurrent work and real-time information sharing between key business partners in order to design and develop customised products. The use of traditional communication media such as e-mail, phone and fax is not satisfactory to get real-time information and is time-consuming and most often ineffective. In such environments, an Information and Communication Technology (ICT)/Web-based technology supports real-time information sharing among networked SMEs for the collaborative design and manufacturing of customised products. This study proposes an innovative ICT platform supporting SMEs collaboration, through Web and the Internet of Things technologies, which follows the Net-Challenge conceptual approach and methodological guidelines for SMEs to form and operate virtual organisations for the collaborative development and delivery of customised products. The ICT Platform was assessed in three different industry domains, namely the textile and apparel, the footwear and the machine tools, respectively. This ICT solution promotes collaboration, with substantial advantages for SMEs including the reduction of costs and delivery time and improvement of the innovation potential

Managing mechanisms for collaborative new-product development in the ceramic tile design chain

This paper focuses on improving the management of New-Product Development (NPD) processes within the particular context of a cluster of enterprises that cooperate through a network of intra- and inter-firm relations. Ceramic tile design chains have certain singularities that condition the NPD process, such as the lack of a strong hierarchy, fashion pressure or the existence of different origins for NPD projects. We have studied these particular circumstances in order to tailor Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) tools and some other management mechanisms to fit suitable sectoral reference models. Special emphasis will be placed on PLM templates for structuring and standardizing projects, and also on the roles involved in the process.This work was partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología; Dirección General de Investigación under the Plan Nacional de I+D+i programme for Research Promotion (Project DPI2002_02141. CE-TILE). We also acknowledge the help given by Capgemini España S.L.U., TAU Cerámica S.A., Esmalglass S.A., Macer S.A. and Cerámica Kersa S.L. in the new ceramic product design and development pilot experience, which was carried out within the framework of the project

Framework for a business interoperability quotient measurement model

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova da Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial (MEGI)Over the last decade the context of Interoperability has been changing rapidly. It has been expanding from the largely technically focused area of Information Systems towards Business Processes and Business Semantics. However, there exists a need for more comprehensive ways to define business interoperability and enable its performance measurement as a first step towards improvement of interoperability conditions between collaborating entities. Through extensive literature reviews and analysis of European Research initiatives in this area, this dissertation presents the State of the Art in Business Interoperability. The objective of this dissertation is to develop a model that closely captures the factors that are responsible for Business Interoperability in the context of Collaborative Business Processes. This Business Interoperability Quotient Measurement Model (BIQMM), developed in this dissertation uses an interdisciplinary approach to capture the key elements responsible for collaboration performance. Through the quantification of the relevance of each element to the particular collaboration scenario in question, this model enables a quantitative analysis of Business Interoperability, so that an overall interoperability score can be arrived at for enhanced performance measurements.Finally, the BIQMM is applied to a business case involving Innovayt and LM Glassfiber to demonstrate its applicability to different collaboration scenarios

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference: Themes and Impacts

The Bled eConference is the longest-running themed conference associated with the Information Systems discipline. The focus throughout its first quarter-century has been the application of electronic tools, migrating progressively from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Inter-Organisational Systems (IOS) and eCommerce to encompass all aspects of the use of networking facilities in industry and government, and more recently by individuals, groups and society as a whole. This paper reports on an examination of the conference titles and of the titles and abstracts of the 773 refereed papers published in the Proceedings since 1995. This identified a long and strong focus on categories of electronic business and corporate perspectives, which has broadened in recent years to encompass the democratic, the social and the personal. The conference\u27s extend well beyond the papers and their thousands of citations and tens of thousands of downloads. Other impacts have included innovative forms of support for the development of large numbers of graduate students, and the many international research collaborations that have been conceived and developed in a beautiful lake-side setting in Slovenia

\u27Do It Yourself (DIY)\u27 E-Business Solutions for Small and Medium Enterprises

The potential benefits and cost of adopting and implementing e-business solutions are both high. They are major attraction and concern for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) respectively. If a right tradeoff point is not balanced between the two, a breakthrough progress is unlikely to become true. This paper addresses this very issue by proposing and developing a new approach based on the concept of “portalets” that are used as building blocks to develop e-business solutions with no or varying degree of customization efforts. Portalets are designed following the platform for deriving the software product lines. This “Do It Yourself (DI)” approach significantly reduces the time and effort to an affordable level while capturing the unique business logics into the solutions. In this paper, the necessity, feasibility, and the challenging issues of the proposed DIY e-business approach will be discussed. Case studies will be presented to demonstrate the approach and directions for further work

Research on Upgrading and Building of Public Technology Service Platform for SMES in Jiangsu Province under the Background of “Internet +”

With the full popularization and rapid development of Internet technology, Jiangsu small and medium-sized enterprises are facing great opportunities and challenges. The public technical service platform for small and medium enterprises can effectively respond to the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises and strive for necessary government resources when conducting corporate guidance. At the same time, for government agencies, relying on the platform\u27s appeal and social relations is conducive to the effective publicity and promotion of government policies, so upgrading the public technology service platform for SMEs is the key to connect the government and enterprises. This paper breaks through the description of traditional technology service platform confined to geographic space, extends the technology service function to the Internet area, and introduces the “Internet +” concept and platform agglomeration theory to the upgrading and construction of public technology service platform of Jiangsu small and medium-sized enterprises