A multi-criteria model for the evaluation of business benefits in horizontal collaborative networks

Despite many advantages that could be gained through belonging to enterprise networks, only a few networks continue running businesses after the governments stop their funding. One of the reasons is the lack of a model that evaluates the benefits from the firm's point of view. The objective of this work is to develop a model that estimates the benefits in horizontal collaborative networks, for a considered business opportunity, and determines the optimal network configuration in terms of the selected enterprises. We propose a method for evaluating the profits for a collaborative network based on a combination of product realisation graph and core competences identification. Through the case study of a Swiss horizontal collaborative network, the proposed approach proves its efficiency in selecting the optimal network of partners and evaluating their corresponding turnover and profit

A multi-criteria model for the evaluation of business benefits in horizontal collaborative networks

Despite many advantages that could be gained through belonging to enterprise networks, only a few networks continue running businesses after the governments stop their funding. One of the reasons is the lack of a model that evaluates the benefits from the firm's point of view. The objective of this work is to develop a model that estimates the benefits in horizontal collaborative networks, for a considered business opportunity, and determines the optimal network configuration in terms of the selected enterprises. We propose a method for evaluating the profits for a collaborative network based on a combination of product realisation graph and core competences identification. Through the case study of a Swiss horizontal collaborative network, the proposed approach proves its efficiency in selecting the optimal network of partners and evaluating their corresponding turnover and profits

Trust categories and their impacts on information exchange processes in vertical collaborative networked organisations

Whereas small and medium enterprises can answer the different business challenges through cooperation within collaborative networked organisations (CNOs), human aspects constitute a fundamental issue in these networks since it is neither organisations nor information systems but people that cooperate. This paper addresses the major human aspect considered in vertical CNOs, namely trust that can significantly impact knowledge and know-how exchange as well as information sharing. A case study on Swiss Microtech, a vertical collaborative network from the industry of machining operations, is presented and discussed with respect to these issues. With the help of an analytic hierarchy process technique designed and developed, different trust types are identified, their corresponding weights are evaluated and their relationships with information sharing and exchange are discussed. The results show that the institutional perceptions of trust and its attributes in the enterprises studied are very close to each other. Furthermore, out of the five identified types, only competence, relational and contractual trust categories have a significant impact on strengthening the relationships between enterprises belonging to a vertical CNO

Network structure analysis for multicultural industrial CNO

Emerging countaries like China offer low wages, large production capacities and a huge potential market. Large Western companies already took advantage of these opportunities by opening their own factories ill China to build up local supply chains and address this new market, but this solution is not adapted to SME having very limited human and financial resources

Collaborative Manufacturing Management in Networked Supply Chains

ERP systems provide information management and analysis to industrial companies and support their planning activities. They are currently mostly based on theoretical values (averages) of parameters and not on the actual, real shop floor data, leading to disturbance of the planning algorithms. On the other hand, sharing data between manufacturers, suppliers and customers becomes very important to ensure reactivity towards markets variability. This paper proposes software solutions to address these requirements and methods to automatically capture the necessary corresponding shop floor information. In order to share data produced by different legacy systems along the collaborative networked supply chain, we propose to use the Generic Product Model developed by Hitachi to extract, translate and store heterogeneous ERP data

Real-Time Collaborative Information Management in Enterprises

The European manufacturing sector has experienced considerable changes in the last several decades because of the reduction of the manufacturing depth. Continuous pressure on prices and global competition forced companies to concentrate on core competences, thus outsourcing most of their production activities. However, information management becomes the main important challenge for these enterprises to ensure efficient communication and material and information flows synchronization with their partners, because different categories of information are considered with a high-exchange frequency. This chapter addresses the main industrial requirements for real-time information management within the Digital Factory, identifies the corresponding shop floor information and data required, and proposes the adequate methods to automatically capture the data and display them for shop floor actors