Actors’ networks management for design co-ordination

International audienceIn a worldwide context of collaborative development of new products and/or services, companies have to control the design process to increase design performance. Formal and informal networks of actors are activated during the very first phases of product development projects in order to define the company's partners in a more efficient way. Our goal is to study relationships between co-design projects and networks of partners in order to help project managers in setting up design teams. This leads to the identification of several driverswhich influence the actors' network use and leading. Drivers such as project organisational structure, concurrent engineering techniques, groupware-like and knowledge-based systems support and enhance such networks. We will base our experimental issues on an industrial case study from energy production sector. This industrial case explores the structure and the management of actors'networks

Qualification of the adaptive capacities of livestock farming systems

This paper aims at exploring what is covered by « adapting to last » with a farming systems approach. Long term dynamics can be analysed as adaptive cycles, the system being permanently exposed to disturbances and shocks. Mobilizing the concept of resilience, we analyse the factors that differentiate the principles for long term action the livestock farmers have, principles which give consistency to the family - farms trajectories. With the concept of operational flexibilty, we qualify the sources of flexibility the livestock farmers maintain to cope with hazards. They are internal, related to the production process regulation properties, to the technical (adaptive or rigid) specifications, to the sales policies, or external related to the information and commercial networks. Understanding the production process regulation properties require livestock farming systems models (i.e. combining decisional and biological sub-systems) that can simulate how herd dynamics operate under fluctuant rules or productive parameters. It also require to evaluate the room for manoeuvre the work organization let to the farmer. All these aspects are illsutrated with on farm studies in herbivore systems (sheep, dairy, beef).<br>Este artigo busca explorar "adaptações a mudanças" sob a ótica de sistemas de produção animal. Dinâmicas de longo prazo podem ser analisadas como ciclos adaptativos, sendo o sistema permanentemente exposto a distúrbios e choques. Utilizando o conceito de resiliência, analisam-se os fatores que diferenciam os princípios para ações de longo prazo tomadas por produtores rurais, princípios estes que dão consistência à família - trajetórias da propriedade rural. Com o conceito de flexibilidade operacional, qualificam-se as fontes de flexibilidade que os produtores mantêm para lidar com riscos. Eles são internos, relacionados a propriedades de regulação do processo produtivo, a especificações técnicas (adaptáveis ou rígidas), a políticas de vendas; ou externos, relacionados a redes de informação ou comercialização. A compreensão das propriedades de regulação do processo de produção exige modelos de sistemas de produção animal (i.e. por combinação de sub-sistemas de decisão e biológicos) que possam simular como a dinâmica do rebanho opera sob regras variáveis ou parâmetros produtivos. É necessário também avaliar o espaço para manobra da organização do trabalho deixado ao produtor. Todos esses aspectos são ilustrados com estudos em sistemas de pastagens (ovino, bovino de leite, bovino de corte)