Collaborative Systems for Reindustrialization

The establishment of collaborative business ecosystems is widely accepted as a key strategy in the reindustrialization processes. This is clearly present in the ongoing policy discussions and industry-oriented research roadmaps. A brief analysis of recent contributions to the PRO-VE conference shows the active role already played by the collaborative networks community in this process. Focusing on areas such as service orientation and service-enhanced products, sustainability issues, collaboration stimulation strategies, co-innovation, and improvement of distributed processes, the area is contributing with valuable models, organizational structures, infrastructures and tools to enable a new generation of sustainable industrial systems.

New directions in modern industry are creating distributed virtual enterprises and pushing companies towards service-enhanced products. Both trends converge when a Virtual Manufacturing Enterprise (VME) is created to provide product-service solutions. At the same time, sustainability is a crucial aspect for industrial networks. This paper proposes a methodology to assess the sustainability of Product-Service Systems (PSS) in a VME by modelling an integrated lifecycle, defining impact categories and KPIs, and evaluating all the partners’ contributions. The method allows easily comparing PSS design alternatives to each other or with traditional products. The industrial case study is represented by a “washing as a service” solution proposed by a worldwide VME. Sustainability assessment is useful to highlight the service benefits as well as the critical phases, and to support VME decision-making.

Nowadays product-oriented companies are facing the need to focus on the service rather than the product alone. By following a Service-Dominant Strategy, we need to focus on the ecosystem embodying the collaboration to provide such a service. This collaborative perspective on value creation and value sharing is the foundation for designing new business models within the ecosystem. We take the lessons learned in the car-leasing domain on the development of a Service-Dominant Strategy to design a tool supporting the transition from product focus to Product-Service ecosystems.

In this paper, we attempt to explain that Product Service Systems (PSS) are not based solely on technical and functional aspects, but that organizational and collaborative aspects are also involved. Thus, we propose a servitization analyzing approach that highlights the need to manage the complexity of the iconic functional and decisional areas related to this strategy. We propose a transition process conceptual model adapted from a modeling framework for business decision-making processes (GRAI framework and tools).

Increasing market competition leads to a differentiation of service providers by offering hybrid services as value added services. In product-service ecosystems the effectiveness of cross-company business processes constitutes a major competitive factor. In this paper, we present a procedure model for simulation-based process benchmarking in the domain of industrial service procurement. In focus are cross-company business processes in service networks in bilateral collaboration scenarios of service providers and service consumers. A systematic analysis of performance indicators measures reveals weaknesses and potential for improvement. A set of hands on uses cases realizes validation and evaluation of yielded benchmarking results.

Application contexts such as the support to service-enhanced products require the interplay of various collaborative networks along the product life-cycle. Based on the solar energy parks case, various long- and short-term networks are identified and their inter-dependencies briefly analyzed. A cloud-based collaborative environment is developed to support the various types of networks. Presented results are achieved in the context of the GloNet project.

Collaboration through sharing competencies and resources has been a key approach to both creating new competitive environments, as well as achieving the needed agility to rapidly answer to market demands. Establishing proper collaborative networks for service-enhanced products is challenging considering the wide diversity of business operations and involved resources. The creation of software solutions to support such collaboration is an effort-intensive task, especially when these solutions are designed to run in the cloud and when they are required to be highly customisable to different end-user scenarios. In this paper we describe how a cloud-based platform can support the creation of software solutions for the collaborative development and operation of highly customised and service-enhanced products. The platform has been designed based on numerous key requirements that have been generated from the analysis of different business scenarios from various use cases/domains, as well as general key requirements a cloud based platform should provide to support collaboration among organisations.

The notion of service-enhanced product brings new perspectives for value creation and differentiation in manufacturing. The existence of complex and highly customized products, the inclusion of business services that add value to the product typically require the collaboration of multiple stakeholders. It is natural that each stakeholder has its own set of values and preferences and as a result, conflicts among them might emerge due to some values misalignment. Therefore, the Value System Alignment assessment should be included when selecting partner for the formation of long-term collaborative networks for the operation and management of the product life-cycle. This paper presents the implementation of a Value System alignment assessment model, as a component of the cloud-based collaborative environment designed to support a mix of collaborative enterprise networks involved in the solar energy sector.

This paper addresses the design of an information system for specification of complex configured products, such as the solar power plants or large intelligent buildings, which by nature are designed, constructed, installed, operated, and maintained through virtual consortium of enterprises. In other words, typically a number of virtual organizations are involved during the entire life cycle of these products. The involved companies include the equipment suppliers, business service providers, and tailored software system developers, that form a consortium typically coordinated and managed by an EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) contractor or a so called project developer. Furthermore, remote access is required through the cloud to different elements of the complex product’s specification, to effectively support these products. An approach and a set of mechanisms are introduced in the paper for effective cloud-based specification of such complex products. The addressed generic system supports different involved stakeholders with customization of the planned complex product, satisfying both their preferences and mandatory standard criteria. The specification system is being implemented as a generic pilot information system, supporting iterative specification of configured sub-products for the planned complex product. This information system also constitutes the base for the next step of this research, focused on semi-automating the process of sub-products cataloging and building an intelligent recommender for complex product configuration, in dialogue with the user.

Due to its promising effects on the economic development, innovation networks have been recognized as an important instrument for the industrialization of regions and nations. Therefore, the creation of innovation networks has been fostered by national and regional innovation systems, as several EU nations are launching clustering and networking incentive programs. For example, the German Government initiated in 2002 an incentive program to foster the creation of innovation networks between SMEs, large enterprises, and research institutes. This research aims at identifying different strategies used in practice for the intentional creation of innovation networks by means of a multi-case study on a German enterprise that adhered to the German Government incentive in order to create nine networks during the past three years. Through this exploratory study, we were able to identify three distinctive strategies used by the network managers for the intentional creation of innovation networks: Cooperation Project, Partner Alignment, and Activity Alignment.

The development of complex products and services require the domain of distinct types of knowledge that enterprises do not usually hold. In order to address this problem, the issue of assessment the knowledge circulation in collaborative environments started to attract attention. Starting with some discussion on mechanisms of production and circulation of knowledge that might operate in a collaborative environment, this paper introduces an approach for assessing knowledge circulation in a co-innovation network. Finally, based on experimental results from a Portuguese collaborative network, BRISA network, a discussion on the benefits, challenges and difficulties found are presented and discussed.

In 2007 the Processes and IT area in CEMEX launched an Open Innovation Strategy to collaborate with external experts such as universities, consultants and associations at a global level in key strategic topics. As a result, a portfolio of more than 50 collaborative research projects has been launched in particular with different academic organizations mainly in Europe and Mexico. Different lessons learned have been obtained, but one of the most relevant ones, has been the acknowledgement of different ways to manage collaborative research projects according to the business opportunities and the need to identify a process and roles to enable successful collaborations. Such collaborative spaces enable the sharing and co-creation of knowledge and the emergence of knowledge markets where intellectual capital is co-developed. This paper proposes a process to enable firms collaborate with Universities to deploy an open innovation model and the actors enabling it.

This paper demonstrates a lightweight and highly decentralized collaboration infrastructure approach for virtual enterprises and describes its added-value in the customer-oriented production domain. First, we will describe challenges and key requirements of an exemplary application scenario. Second, we are going to present the reference architecture and will explain the designs of enabling key concepts. Finally we highlight major improvements to the selected domain and the impact in economic, competition and social terms.

Collaboration represents an increasing tendency among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), since the possibility of being a cooperative partner of a network allows the achievement of development strategies, either to improve production processes or to increase competitiveness. The objective of the paper is to propose and apply a new methodology to model manufacturing SME networks in terms of graph matrices, in order to identify some conditions that can foster an effective collaboration among partners of a SME network. A classification of SME networks in four typologies named “Marshallian Network”, “Supply chain network”, “Hub and Spoke network” and “Scientific Park” will be introduced. For each typology a graph-based model will be used to find out limits and critical points that can hinder the SME collaboration, or focal points for the interaction reinforcing.

Among the various manifestations of collaborative networks in the literature, the Virtual Breeding Environment (VBE) has highlighted in the economic scenario since its implementation can provide the creation of Virtual Organizations (VO). The objective of this paper is to propose a practical model for supporting virtual organizations within their breeding environments, under the analytical approach of networks. The research method used is the study of multiple cases, involving eight VBEs of the manufacturing sector. The methodology that will support the creation of the proposed model is called Enterprise Knowledge Development (EKD), comprised of models of goals, concepts, business rules, actors and resources, processes and requirements and technical components. It is hoped that this model can enable the generation of concrete possibilities of facilitating the operation of the network as a whole. Additional topics will be presented in further work.

This conceptual paper focuses a comprehensive business model for service-oriented collaborative networks and Virtual Enterprises. In that context an innovative concept for the operative controlling of enterprises operating in order-specific configured collaborative systems is introduced. This approach includes a variety of methodologies. The main part of that approach considers income allocation based on the realised performance. Therefore a concept for the order-specific performance analysis has been developed. Additionally incentive mechanisms are considered. By the help of that approach new impulses for the operative enterprise management and controlling are available.

Traffic flow assignment system that includes two navigation providers is considered. Navigation providers predict future traffic conditions and provide travel guidance for given original-destination demand and network capacity. Three classes of drivers are introduced. The users of navigation service from the first and the second classes are supplied with the shortest path guidance by navigation providers «Navigator 1» and «Navigator 2» correspondingly. The third class of drivers is characterized by user-optimal behavior without current guidance information about traffic conditions. The main goals of Navigators are to assign the traffic flow of their customers (users) so as to maximize appropriate pay-off functions which depend on original estimation of traffic volume delay and are influenced by decision of both of them. Existence and uniqueness of Nash equilibrium in considered non-zero sum game are proven and an explicit form of Nash equilibrium is presented.

The installation and operation of instrument/sensor networks has great importance in monitoring the physical environment from local to global scale. Nowadays, such networks comprise vital parts of integrated information systems that are called Environmental Information Systems (EIS). Such systems provide real time monitoring, forecasts and interesting conclusions extracted from the collected data sets that are stored in huge databases. These systems are used as the main source of data for model parameterization and as verification tools for accuracy assessment techniques. This paper comprises a short survey aiming to highlight the significant role of existing Environmental Information Systems (ELIS) consisted of instrument/sensor networks that are used for large-scale monitoring of environmental issues regarding atmospheric and marine environment. The operating principles of these systems, their usefulness, restrictions and their perspectives in the environmental sciences, are studied and described.

The objectives of this research are: monitoring of project progress during execution, assessment project health on demand, to identify and make timely recommendations for corrective action in response to anticipated schedule delays. Implementation of this information in flexible process modeling approaches, like process configuration method enhances an alternative process planning. The paper proposes a solution in collaboration with cyber-physical system CPS based on RFID technology to minimize manual inputs and enhance data acquisition. Furthermore, it enables planers anticipating and identifying schedule delays and exceptions early or even before they happen. Analysis of the real-time data collected on site and actual vs. scheduled deviation will be transformed into a meaningful classification. This paper presents a comprehensive solution to integrate the outcomes of analysis real-time data into a knowledge base for updating the entire progress, handling exceptions and supporting efficient process alternative modeling.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is becoming a very powerful strategy for develop more flexible software solutions and to shorten their time-to-market. Typical SaaS providers are SMEs, which have several limitations to keep competitive. The essential motivation of this work is to provide better means to allow groups of SaaS providers (a Virtual Organization - VO) to work collaboratively towards more valuable SaaS solutions that are composed of individual and shared SaaS providers’ services. However, working collaboratively requires handling plenty of issues in many dimensions. This work provides a comprehensive and consolidated list of reference processes that SaaS providers should deal with along the (VO) life cycle of a collaboration. This helps them to better plan and manages their activities and involved assets in a collaboration.

Business process models can help to improve process visibility and shared understanding, particularly across internal and external stakeholders. By supporting knowledge transfer and enhancing documentation, they aid compliance and ultimately improve software quality. However, many current process modelling approaches and tools require significant learning on the part of users and resultant models may often be prone to errors. The use of such approaches also demands a certain level of domain expertise in both the business and IT domains. Hence, the need to accommodate a wider user group for business process models, including those, often end users, who are not IT experts. Context-aware process modelling allows end users to identify a business process model from a process repository according to different context information. In this paper, we develop a new approach to help end users for building up potential process models using PVDI (process variability through declarative and imperative). A real world case is used to explain and verify our approach.

This paper studies the specification, mapping and the transforming of behavioral aspects of Open Distributed Processing Information Language, within the context of Model Driven Architecture. In order to specify the executable behavior of a system and to make the processes of the Information executable and controllable, the Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing can be used as a meta-model for behavioral specifications. In the Information language the behavior is specified in terms of schema dynamic, processes, actions, state and the relationships between these concepts. In this work we describe how behavior process can be generated exploiting the benefits of a MDA approach. We define the behavior models by using UML profile and their transformations into BPEL artifacts.

The Construction is an industry that depends on interorganizational relationships to enable its product. Most of the projects are held from networks, especially those for large scale projects of infrastructure, with flexible relationships for cooperation, and the

modus operandi

of virtual enterprises. However, there is a lack of studies on the analytical approach of networks considered their life cycle and the operation and reconfiguration phases for these large projects. The paper aims at developing a Reference Model for the phases of operation and reconfiguration of a construction network, specifically a subway infrastructure project. The model used a development process and is represented with the EKD Methodology (Enterprise Knowledge Development). A Case Study was used as reference. The Model enables the coordination of network activities from the perspective of collaboration. Other research opportunities emerge aiming at obtaining advances in scope and scale, considering this Case Study as an initial effort.

To succeed, long term organizations must compete efficiently and out-perform their competitors in a dynamic environment. To survive in this competition, identification, classification and management of organizational capabilities are vital. This paper presents a methodology for developing a system to store, manage, and maintain intra-organizational capabilities for decision making processes on resources, processes and strategies for business opportunities. The proposed methodology is explored in an educational manufacturing cell.

During the product technology transfer process, the high level of communication, coordination and cooperation among the members involved in this activity is necessary. Making use of a collaborative environment is essential for managing this process and the project. In this sense, the paper presents the technical components and requirements model to support developing this environment and assist the collaboration and product technology transfer. The Enterprise Knowledge Development (EKD) methodology was used to develop the model. The proposed model was based on literature and in seven case studies conducted in small and medium-sized high-technology firms. As a result, this paper shows a group of functional and non-functional requirements as well as the goals that the information system should have to allow the communication and the exchange of information in transfer projects involving collaboration. Furthermore, this research contributes to the information system development that supports these projects.

Today’s enterprise information and cooperation systems are numerous and diverse. Users have problems of information overload, task interruption and media discontinuity. A unification approach of existing systems would be supportive to overcome these issues by reducing the variety and thereby the complexity. A process of unification starts with the comprehension of existing systems belonging to the virtual environment, by modeling them. The second step is the unification on the model layer followed by the last step, the design of the user interface. This paper will present the first step, a meta-model for cooperation systems, which applies concepts used in professional groupware systems as well as social media platforms. Major elements and concepts of cooperation systems will be identified to provide a basis for the unification of the virtual environment.

Collaborative Networks (CNs) research, like any other developing discipline, needs a roadmap facilitating the integration of previous results into a theoretical foundation. CN researchers argue that the required theoretical foundation must consolidate the existing body of knowledge, and provide grounding to define how to invoke results of other relevant disciplines. The authors have previously proposed the ‘Cybernetics of the Collaborative Networks’ (C2N) as a field of CN-research intended as a unified theory of CNs, formalising, synthesising, harmonising and systematising individual CN-related results addressing management and control problems in CNs. This article aims at further extending the concept of C2N and answering the question: what is a unified evolving theory of the CN discipline itself? To model the

discipline-as-a-system

, we use Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) and introduce three basic components of the CN discipline as a viable system. A ‘co-evolution mechanisms’ for the discipline is proposed and a cybernetic model of co-evolution is applied to the CN discipline.

Current practice in the construction industry is that participants apply their own method to develop their information model, apply software of their preference and hence choose data formats that suit them better. Hence, diversity appears. The concept of multi-models is introduced to handle this diversity. By employing multi-models, each participant will be able to collaborate despite having different resources. Information exchange can be accomplished by using multi-model containers as transport medium. An ontology model is used as a resource to gather, store and manage the meta-information about the multi-models. As a part of Semantic Web technology, the ontology is able to describe the meaning of each multi-model. Furthermore, it creates the possibility of inferring information to a logical pattern. With this ability, the ontology can support participants to retrieve information they need much more properly and precisely than object or relational data structures would allow.

The development of the Single Window concept (unique access/contact point for composite services) for the multimodal door-to-door freight transport management is a complex endeavour that is being addressed by the European MIELE project. Led by port authorities, the project identified the need for a novel strategy to foster collaboration among stakeholders with a diversity of processes and technology. The multimodal perspective requires a convergence and thus collaboration of maritime, railway, road, and air transport facilities as it is the case for the need of traffic information for a real-time (re)planning if some accident is hindering the current route. This requires that traffic information from different operators is integrated into the freight transport routing planner. Furthermore, a unified coordination and operations management of the existing business processes is lacking. To integrate such contexts, an open enterprise collaboration network (ECoNet) infrastructure is presented and discussed.

Effective industry and public project planning, design and execution are increasingly dependent on instant collaboration to deal with unexpected situations and events, caused by nature, technology or people. Agile approaches to enterprise design, responding to growing variety, emergence and complexity of sectors are being researched. This paper presents an agile approach, and illustrates its potential through reporting from pilots and case studies. Agile model-based and architecture-driven solutions have been prototyped. These have a potential for removing interoperability barriers, managing dependencies and complexity, enabling iterative design and smart adaptive operations of products and services. Instant collaboration is triggered by parameters and rules linking affected workspaces, and enabled by architecture-driven knowledge spaces integrated in a visual role-oriented and adaptive work environment. Local practices and work-centric context as well as global context are captured.

Virtualizing structures, functions and operations of real companies, simulated enterprises provide a learning environment where learners acquire professional knowledge and practical skills. Collaborative networks for simulated enterprises allow participants performing management functions, virtual transaction or production simulations and developing entrepreneurial behaviors in a collaborative professional environment. This paper aims to present a functional collaborative environment for practice in virtual enterprises in which actors are students, universities and real companies.

In this paper, we discuss the importance of collaborative planning for manufacturing enterprises. We have analysed user stories provided by industry to understand the collaborative processes in their workplaces and their needs for Information Systems (IS) support. Based on the analysis of the user stories, we have proposed a framework for collaborative planning and ideas for the design of IS supporting this activity. These will be used to conduct focussed interviews with the users to refine our design before implementing the system.

In the Future Internet vision, multiple services coming from heterogeneous organizations have to collaborate together in order to achieve the customers’ demands from both functional and non-functional point of view. Hence, it is necessary, within an organization, to put in place an interoperable approach that ensures the best functioning control and selection of services. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for representing the customer Non-Functional Properties (NFP) within a collaborative Business Process Management (BPM) and the contribution of the Service Oriented Architecture Governance (SOA Governance) to give customers a better selection of services that best suits their business NFPs requirements among all Web Services candidates provided by functional matching.

Recently, Alternative Agrifood Networks (AAFNs) represent a form of collaborative agrifood networks characterized by a re-connection and close communication among producers and consumers in order to overcome the limits of dominant capital-intensive agribusiness system. In this paper, we propose a framework to analyze and explore the value of the use of mobile information services in an AAFN. The applicability of the framework is shown by presenting some results obtained from an analysis of different types of case studies referring to the use of mobile services in real-world AAFNs.

Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies are normally used to establish radio communication between two NFC compatible devices by touching them together or bringing them together less than four centimeters. Nowadays, the interface of a large range of business and consumer applications are based on such technologies. In this paper, we propose a model to identify human-system interaction patterns that occur when NFC enabled devices are employed. Moreover, we show the applicability of such a model through an analysis of a relevant number of real world cases of applications and services which have currently arisen in many business streams. The study is aimed to categorize current NFC interfaces and to explore their underneath value.

The delivery of product-related services is already a necessary commodity for most goods-producing enterprises [1]. These product-related services are regarded as necessary attachment to successful production of goods. Product and service management include different methods and tools that cover the whole lifecycle [2]. Information systems such as Product-Lifecycle Management/Product-Data-Management (PLM/PDM) systems help to support and implement these methods with the aim to raise efficiency and quality at affordable costs. However, there is a gap in modeling product-related services, with the aim to support the development and management of services. These services increasingly become a vital part for many companies, yet are often neglected. The objective of our paper is to reduce problems with product-related services focusing on the modeling of services and their lifecycles in companionship with the lifecycle of the products they support. It can help to solve problems such as fitting cost estimation, matters of quality control and communication in-house or with the customer. Therefore, modeling approaches of service engineering need to find their implementation in PLM/PDM systems, in the way, that the interrelationships between product and service (e.g. a maintenance service for a certain sold machine) can be accounted for. Our work derives from case study work realized in the field of engineering. Therefore, as result, we are able to show exemplarily how this model can be integrated in an existing PLM system [3].

In the current economic crisis, also the manufacturing sector is asked to evolve towards more dynamic organizational structures within which, composing manufacturing processes, almost in real time, will become a need. This work aims at introducing flexibility and dynamisms to current manufacturing processes by separating its tasks from its final performers. With the proposed approach, the performers’ replacement can be done almost seamlessly. Additionally, the approach shows how dynamic negotiation and contracting, either for a whole process or a single activity, can be smoother if the task specification is based on a standard service interface defined at the ecosystem level. At the end, a prototype implementation is briefly described.

The paper presents the findings of a qualitative analysis that makes use of literature to determine the nature of uncertainties that characterises industrial collaborations for providing sustainable services. It aims to propose a conceptual model of partnership uncertainty management for sustainable services. The analysis finds that managing partnerships uncertainty for sustainable services requires foci that reflect governance structure and relationships climate priorities. These priorities are life-cycle control, resource governance, capability focus and integrative operations with regards to self uncertainty, participative decisions, intervention mechanisms, idea linkage, consumption patterns, communicative structure, clear representations and relationship incentivisation in terms of relationship /behavioural uncertainty, and creativity leveraging, environmental profiling, systemic measuring and process learning as they relate to partner uncertainty. The paper concludes by highlighting research limitations and potential future research directions.

Increasingly, consumer demand of fashionable products is arising as significant challenge for company managers. In order to respond to this demand, companies are asked to supply small series of innovative and fashionable goods of high quality, affordable price and eco-compatibility in short periods of time and with high service levels. As a result of these rapidly evolving challenges, companies are forming collaborative networks in order to design, develop, produce and distribute such products and services in a collaboratively way. These highly integrated and dynamic supply networks depend intensively in new set of tools, methods and related services in which rely the collaborative networking operation. This paper presents a specific case study implementation of these collaborative supporting services, through the realization of a collaborative portal.

From Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster to the recent India blackout, industrial incidents are inevitable and once occurred, their impact on the society and economy can be catastrophic. In an end user perspective, reducing such impact relies on not only efficient service recovery but also effective public communications. To achieve the latter, it requires instant resource sharing in a collaborative network where effective data sharing, integration and management are critical. However, this is not an easy-to-achieve task in a complex system which involves a number of stakeholders. In this paper, we describe a consolidated DaaS model based on our previous work, which can be used to support effective communications in emerging situations and sudden events driven by incidents. We also provide an implementation based on a case study focusing on power incident management in the UK’s national electrical system to demonstrate the usefulness of the model.

Cloud computing security, interoperability, and vendor lock-in are likely to act as inhibitors of the widespread adoption of cloud computing in organizations. This calls for relational and contractual mechanisms to articulate the desired outcomes of service provisioning and acceptable behavior of service recipients and providers. In this paper we conducted a qualitative study interviewing industry experts to understand the extent to which SLA specifications in traditional IT services outsourcing can be applied in cloud computing, identifying elements becoming redundant or not applicable, and new elements capturing the specificity of the business relationships in cloud computing.

Energy efficiency of smart home systems imposes the intelligent management of a huge quantity of data and the collaboration between multiple stakeholders. Indeed, thanks to recent developments in ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and IoT (Internet of Things), it is possible to achieve higher performances and offer new energy-control services. However, data must be not only retrieved but also translated into significant information and related to interoperable tasks. This paper focuses on smart home energy control and defines a methodology to improve smart home information management in order to create an extended energy-efficient network comprehending the distributed manufacturing enterprise as well as the energy utility and the consumers. The case study focuses on a sub-set of interoperable smart devices and shows how to apply the proposed information management model to make an extended virtual enterprise provide energy-control services.

Services become every day more important for society. Cost prediction is one important aspect which has not received the required attention. Nonetheless, its impact on the economic success of service-based industries is considerable and, so, it cannot be overlooked. Therefore, in this paper we tackle the problem of cost prediction of service systems. Since previous work generally followed an ad hoc approach, we present a three layered approach based on customer factors to measure customer involvement since it is a good predictor for service cost. Service co-creation between customer and provider is the central concept of our costing approach. For service modelling we use Linked USDL, and to reason on costing data we use methods from service analytics. On the one hand, we reduce the uncertainty introduced by customers and can predict more accurate service costs. On the other hand, the systematic approach enables a better understanding of the costing problem and the service systems under study, and increases reusability of service analytics algorithms.

This paper presents our experiences from a research project on how to co-develop new methods for idea generation within a service design practice. As an example the paper describes how service designers used two visual inquiry methods together with customers and employees in different service situations. The results show that that there is great potential in developing methods for co-design work based on design approaches. This project relies on a mindset where materials of different kinds, that can be organized and reorganized in different ways are used. This supports a way of creating knowledge that facilitates production of other results than the purely verbal. We have also realized that it requires a great amount of work to achieve a great result.

The paper raises questions concerning how Service Design tools and methodologies might be adapted to the particular needs of industry, enabling their autonomous use by non-designers. The potential for incorporating Service Design thinking into the creative media industries through the development of tools tailored to the industry needs and aspirations is here narrated through the experience gathered by the Moving Targets project, which has been developing a series of tools that merge basic design tools with the development of ’props’ specific to the field of creative media and audience involvement. Reflecting on the project’s work embedded in industry and design-led research processes used in the development of those tools, this paper offers a critical analysis of the value and challenges of this type of work, where the transformational role of design can be at odds with the traditions and cultures of industrial processes.

The current crisis conducts companies to seek new solutions for growth. In this context, the still new field of Service Design (SD) is gaining more and more attention. Easy to use and based on collaborative processes, it enables to achieve quite quick results. However the SD process is mastered by few actors inside organizations. There is a need to scale up the process to the whole organization. To achieve that goal, SD needs to undergo an industrialization process. What’s more, doing SD projects is not enough to change a company. SD has to be linked to transformation strategies. This paper introduces a dedicated framework which is based on four basic components all along the Service Design process: Knowledge, Software tools, Communities and Places. The paper mainly focuses on the first two components. It will be illustrated with a complete demonstration during the session.

From the perspective of reindustrialization, it is important to understand the evolution of the structure of the network of organizations employment structure, and organization value. Understanding the potential influence of collaborative networks (CNs) on these aspects may lead to the development of appropriate economic policies. In this paper, we propose a theoretical approach to analysis this potential influence, based on a model of dynamic networked ecosystem of organizations encompassing collaboration relations among organization, employment mobility, and organization value. A large number of simulations has been performed to identify factors influencing the structure of the network of organizations employment structure, and organization value. The main findings are that 1) the higher the number of members of CNs, the better the clustering and the shorter the average path length among organizations; 2) the constitution of CNs does not affect neither the structure of the network of organizations, nor the employment structure and the organization value.

There is a strong consensus that collaboration and co-creation will become one of the main business drivers in the future. However, the question of how to set-up inter-organizational relationships and involve stakeholders in an efficient way still remains largely unsolved. This paper proposes Anything Relationship Management (xRM) as managerial and technological foundation and platform providing interoperability between different stakeholder groups. It provides an overview of the evolution of the relationship management concept, analyzes the current status of the xRM solution market and proposes an xRM-framework for collaborative networks and cyber-physical systems.

Worldwide, the constant ageing of the population brings significant challenges to the traditional style of health care systems. Rapidly spreading pandemics triggered by new disease strains, increased population mobility and displacements fuelled by conflict and climate change add another dimension to the health care predicament. In this context, proper cooperation and interoperability of the participants in the healthcare effort becomes paramount. Collaboration is an essential factor but also a major challenge, as typically healthcare institutions are hierarchical and heterogeneous, owing to various administrative, geographical and historical reasons. As the pressure on healthcare availability, quality and cost is constantly increasing, governments can no longer rely on traditional models for managing population wellbeing. Innovative holistic and integrated models and procedures taking into account all essential aspects, elements, participants and their life cycle are necessary if these challenges are to be successfully met. Based on previous research and applications, this paper argues that such necessary artefacts can be built using a life cycle-based whole-system paradigm enabled by advances in Collaborative Networks and Enterprise Architecture. This approach aims to provide a sound platform for efficient response delivered by agile and synergic teams to short and long-term challenges to population health and well-being.

Moving from the key features of knowledge economy and taking into consideration the new paradigms emerged in economic and managerial studies, in many countries several institutions have promoted the formation of strategic alliances to stimulate the reindustrialization and promote the national and regional development. The Italian government has recently defined a new legal framework (law n. 122/2010) to implement collaborative strategic networks through the “enterprises’ network agreement”. The latest data about the implementation of the new form of collaborative networks show a rapid spread of the agreement and represent an important result to read in the light of economic, managerial and industrial literature. In the paper the main characteristics of the agreement are described and discussed, and an analysis based on historical data, since two years from its introduction, is presented. The aim is to evaluate how this kind of tool can have an impact on the reindustrialization of the Country and the emergence of second generation VBE on this process.

The migration of manufacturing into Asia, notably China and India, has been accompanied by varying degrees of concern by western (traditional) businesses. Initially the use of

offshoring

by high volume/low value manufacturers was seen as a means by which they could remain price competitive; however the more recent moves by Asian manufacturers into the high value/low volume markets has become both an economic and a political issue in what currently is shaping up to be a more serious economic downturn than the “2008/9 GFC”. The move towards

reshoring

has been driven by the equalisation of wage rates in Asia and the softening of labour attitudes in western manufacturing countries, specifically in North America: where recently some runaway plants returned home, and there are some positive economic incentives to encourage more domestic sourcing. The paper discusses the current and future opportunities for Western companies in this scenario and suggests there is scope for collaboration between Asian and Western organisations.

Modern patterns of rural development propose a rational and respectful exploitation of agricultural resources together with the rediscovery of historical and naturalistic heritage as means to reach sustainable development. In this sense, Agritourism represents the contact point between the tourists’ request of wellbeing, genuineness and rediscovery of nature, and the offer of typical agricultural products and touristic services of a network of rural organizations. The aim of this study is to improve our understanding of how agritourism activities can contribute to revitalize rural communities; the study assumes particular importance in a period of economic crisis characterized by the failure of the traditional patterns of rural development. We present key findings of an explorative survey carried out in the Calabria region, Italy, during 2012 on a sample of 52 farms offering agritourism activities. The study deploys an original methodology aimed to highlight the extent of the agritourism phenomena in the selected region and to evaluate how agritourism can support sustainable development of a rural community becoming the hub of an “agritourism rural network”.

Public interventions of government-owned research and development organisations present a number of challenges exacerbated by continuous changes of industries’ expectations in a turbulent economic climate. There is a need for overcoming the barriers of practicing collaborative projects in government-owned research and development organisations. Conducting a combined Delphi and Analytic Hierarchy Process approach in a case study reveals that the ‘commercial value’ orientation plan yields the highest impact score on innovation factors. Societal value, such as supporting collaborative projects, is ranked in the second place. This leads to a suggestion to increase the organisational responsibility in promoting public-private collaborative projects. Thus, the paper provides an illustrative generic model for deploying the combined Delphi and Analytic Hierarchy Process approach in other government-owned research and development organisations to further improve public interventions for sustainable innovation development.

The aim of this paper consists in presenting a new approach in studying the evolution of the business models of the categories of business actors belonging to a business Ecosystem focused on co-modal logistics networks. Each type of actors is pursuing its own value system on the basis of the key elements that identify and characterize the nature of its activities and business. The focus of the business models is on the key elements that characterize the value-creation links between the involved actors in the Value Chain. The paper focuses on broadening and exploring the traditional concepts of business models showing their evolution when considering the future business environment. To perform this analysis, a template, recalling the well-known approach by Osterwalder, is proposed, discussed and applied to systematically consider alternative approaches to value creation in terms of reference business models.

Tourism, one of the largest industries in the world, has been subject to strong innovation in the last years. Main changes are due to the availability of new Information and Communication Technologies, which directly connect tourists among them and with service providers, and to the always more personalized supply of tourism experience. Such evolution may represent a driver of development for local communities if they are able to reorganize the territorial tourism offer around different pattern of collaboration. In this paper we propose an organizational model for a Tourism Breeding Environment, TBE, whose members are tourism operators of a regional area with tourist vocation. After discussing about which forms of collaborative networked organizations can rise from the TBE, we present a classification of the different levels of collaboration emerging in those forms.

Virtual Organizations (VO) have complex interactions between their members, both industrial and logistics. Once industrial partners are selected, the VO should be complemented with the logistics partners that will deliver the produced goods between those partners. This paper presents a supporting decision method for selecting the most suitable logistics partners that consider not only capabilities, historical performance and availability, but also risks. In general, a risk is characterized by the potential of each logistic partner to do not fulfill VO’s business requirements and that can jeopardize its accomplishment. The method firstly evaluate and measure risks per partner, and collectively afterwards. Its formalization and examples are provided along the paper. Discussions are presented in the end.

Offshoring has been a growing practice in the last decade. This involves transferring or sharing management control of a business process (BP) to a supplier in a different country. Offshoring implicates information exchange, coordination and trust between the overseas supplier and the company that means to assume risk. In this paper categories and types of risk have been hierarchically classified using a new approach with the aim to propose a multilevel reference model for Supply Chain Risk evaluation. This classification has been used to analysis the offshoring decision taking into account not only operational and financial risks but other aspects as strategic, compliance, reputation and environmental. The proper risk identification can help to take the correct decision whether or not to bet on offshoring or maintain all the processes in the country of origin.

Modeling of trust sustainability and evolution among partners of a dynamic Virtual Organizations (VO) whose collaboration is already established, poses high challenge to such virtual co-working environment. Research in VOs has not established suitable modeling approaches for analyzing evolution and sustainability of rational trust and related assessment mechanisms for the collaboration which is already in progress. This is very necessary as it has now been proved that the base trust level acquired by VO partners during the VO formation is not static and cannot to remain constant over entire period of collaborative business execution. Thus proper modeling and analysis approaches for measuring the continuous changing of trustworthiness of organization need to be developed. This paper proposes approaches and mechanisms for modeling and assessment mechanism for supporting inter-organizational trust sustainability and evolution.

Cost optimisation in decentralised, make-to-order production systems requires tight integration with suppliers and transport operations as well as flexible network connections. Additionally, minimisation of environmental impacts of freight flows must be included in the industrial practice to realise sustainable growth. To these aims, the paper presents a model integrating production networks and sustainable freight transportation. The model includes Bill-of-Material constraints with alternative sources having different production and distribution costs. The objective function considers sourcing, production and transportation costs as well as environmental impacts of transport over a multimodal network. Due dates and time windows constraints for production and transportation management are included. Computational experiments are based on a real multimodal network. The optimisation model solved the case study instance. A sensitivity analysis proved the model robustness. The results demonstrate that the model can be effectively used in order to analyse cost-emissions trade-offs and the influence of links’ capacity on emissions.

Planning for sustainable reindustrialization necessitates considerations for environmentally sustainable production processes, packaging and logistics. Pallets are essential for the movement of goods around the world. Millions of pallets enter the global supply chain every year and are used, reused and either discarded or recycled. Since billions of pallets of different types are in use at any time, minimization of overall environmental impacts can be achieved only through process improvements and careful consideration of pallet types for various activities. The paper reviews the current management practices with respect to pallets and identifies issues in different points of the life cycle.

Supplier assessment is a relevant decision-making process that aims at monitoring the progress of suppliers in relevant performance aspects and, if results are worse than expected, establishing action plans to improve performance. The works developed for assessing supplier sustainability usually lack of proper structure to monitor supplier sustainability and mechanisms to weight and consolidate performance data into a global evaluation that allows deciding if the supplier is achieving its sustainability goals up to a proper degree. This paper introduces a methodology that fills this research gap and shows a case study in the automotive sector.

Green Virtual Enterprise Breeding Environments and their Reverse-Green Virtual Enterprises, as dynamic reverse supply networks, represent a promising paradigm to face the reverse logistics and end-of-life manufacturing challenges towards closed-loop industrial processes, closed-loop supply networks and sustainable industrial development models. This paper explores different collaborative product recovery business opportunities and strategies for capturing current missed value at the end-of-lifecycle with new activities, relationships and network configurations, put forward based on the disciplines of Industrial Ecology, Collaborative Networks and Lifecycle Management.

Remanufacturing is an ultimate form of recycling by manufacturing “good as new” products from used products. Through remanufacturing, materials and energy can be saved and less waste is produced. However, at present, the application of remanufacturing is common only in specific industrial fields and geographic areas. This paper describes challenges identified and discusses how collaboration and networking of companies can support the implementation of remanufacturing. In addition to cases described in literature, the study uses information collected from Finnish case companies operating in remanufacturing.

Since the 2008 crisis, the automotive industry is shifting towards a new paradigm and repositioning around the green mobility, using mainly lithium battery technology. Given this new development, the issue of recycling batteries arises for ecological, economic and geostrategic reasons. Our work consists in formalizing a methodology to help design a sustainable recycling network applied to batteries, under uncertainty. The proposed approach involves two steps. The first step is about modeling the recycling network and the characterization of the problem’s elements, using systemic analysis. The second step consists in developing scenarios about the configurations of this value chain, and then optimizing their functioning. We’ll choose different positioning for the actors and make assumptions about logistic data. In this paper, we will try to summarize the issues of recycling lithium battery, explain in detail this approach and present the first results of application.

This paper presents an innovative approach to improve sustainability of logistics pooling strategy by reducing CO2 emissions and social incidents. Our approach aims to increase the collaborative network efficiency in the context of agri-food SMEs. The combination of discrete event simulation and analytical optimization approaches enables to analyze different pooling scenarios and to optimize pooled distribution network. The developed model takes into account the specificities of agri-food SMEs flows. The thereby improved utilization of logistics resources impacts economic and ecological and societal performance indicators.

It is out of question the importance that intangible assets have acquired during the last decade. The management of such intangible assets is getting more and more the attention of both academics and professionals. It is aimed, through the application of different models and tools, to measure and manage them in order to achieve competitive advantages that will lead to better business sustainability. In this sense, organizations, taking into account both the intra and the inter-organizational level, must be able to seek and find the most efficient ways of integrating their intangible assets within their performance management systems. Up to now, most of the existing scientific works are focused on managing the intangible assets at the intra-organizational context. The key role that collaborative networks has got at the business ecosystem nowadays, and will have in the future, demands to define frameworks that deal with intangible assets management at the inter-enterprise context. This paper describes an approach of how to integrate intangible assets within collaborative networks. It follows a collaborative business processes approach, taking into account both the global ambit of the collaborative network as well as the individual enterprises that comprise the collaborative network ambit. The model includes a simplified and agile intangible assets management model, which might be used as a reference framework for collaborative networks in this field.

One of the main characteristics of successful collaborative networks is their ability to continuously reformulating their processes. The, they can quickly get adapted to environment needs and therefore define more competitive processes. One of biggest weaknesses of Performance Management Systems (PMS) when dealing with collaborative processes associated to collaborative networks, is their low degree of both dynamicity and flexibility to get adapted to the changes that such collaborative processes experiment. The main changes that can take place are, among others, small or large modifications of the own processes, entrance and/or exit of new participants in the process, incorporation and/or elimination of processes, changes in objectives and/or strategies of processes of some participant, or even of the whole collaborative network, etc. All this brings continuous modifications over the components that conform the PMS. Then, it is necessary to structure certain mechanisms that will provide with both dynamicity and flexibility to the PMS. Otherwise, these PMS will become obsolete in the short-time and will be not useful anymore. Further, these PMS will not measure properly performance and then they will become ineffective, becoming the source of troubles. Scientific literature shows that most of the works that deal with PMS dynamicity and flexibility are focused on intra-organizational contexts, leaving almost apart the collaborative networks ambit. This work analyses those aspects that prevent to the PMS to be dynamic and flexible when applied to manage the performance of collaborative networks. In addition, we discuss and analyse several mechanisms that should be incorporated into the PMS, making them more dynamic and flexible.

After decades of industrial decline, the models of firm competitiveness, green economy, green growth, are making the news. Indeed, there is a growing trend in the reversal of outsourcing or offshoring production of goods and services while inter-firm relationships are under scrutiny. A trend being reinforced by the global awareness on resources scarcity, to integrate in the processes the impacts of climate change and eventually reduce them, to prepare for growing energy costs. The linear economy and it’s models of value creation based on trading margins of imported, outsourced, goods and services, global competition between companies, resources spillage, has shown it’s limits.

Collaborative networks are characterised by the establishment of relations in more or less hierarchical power structures. The hierarchy of the network is defined by the partners’ power degree. Hierarchical structures and associated barriers limit the decision making and discourage collaboration within partners. This paper focuses on proposing a method to allow researchers to identify the power degree of each network partner, through Markov Chains. Knowing the power distribution, helps researchers to diagnose the power balance, reconsider the status in the network and have a better view of power interaction and collaboration. Therefore, the power distribution analysis is a key issue to understand the partners’ behaviour and achieve sustainable networks.

To cope with the customer-oriented business model in a global competitive market, enterprises tend to be networked for achieving mass customisation: i.e. offering customisable products with the same efficiency as mass production. This scenario highlights two faces of variability: variability of needs (on customer side) and variability of organisations (on production side). Both types of variability induce a huge number of specified products, namely configurations. This configuration variability must be efficiently managed. This position paper discusses trends and issues for rationalising the number of configurations: i.e. engineering the right number of configurations that match both the customer needs and the production strategy. After this positioning, we propose a systemic perspective for addressing the discussed issues from a sustainability point of view. Finally we give a perspective for a product line definition method that leads to models that meet the discussed variability rationalisation.

The French SocEDA project aims at providing a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform for dynamic and complex event-driven interactions between large highly distributed and heterogeneous service systems. This platform should be able to combine a publish/subscribe mechanism (to collect events coming from heterogeneous and distributed services) with complex event processing of these collected events in order to detect interesting situations a service should react on. The SocEDA platform should also offer suggestions about relevant changes (adaptation) to do in running processes and services. The context of city logistics is chosen to show some of the basic abilities of the SocEDA platform and the relevance of event management in everyday situations.

The ability to deal with both foreseen and unforeseen changes in a collaborative process (also known as Collaborative Process flexibility) is considered critical for the business process management systems. In this paper, we present an approach that uses a modeling framework and engine called Situation Action Network (SAN), along with multi-criteria decision making methods and techniques (MCDM). Such combination introduces event-driven flexibility in collaborative processes. We discuss and implement appropriate notions and mechanisms in order to alleviate a part of the modeler’s effort during the design of hierarchical rules (i.e. SAN trees). This increases their run time flexibility and support the adaptation of collaborative business processes. We validate our approach using an illustrative scenario taken from the nuclear crisis management domain.

In this paper we present PLAY Platform, a Web-oriented distributed semantic middleware that serves as an Event Marketplace: the place where heterogeneous events can be integrated and combined. The purpose of the platform is to derive useful information from diverse real-time sources such as collaborative processes. The platform provides technology where instant results are needed or where heterogeneous data must be integrated on the fly or where the data arrive fast enough to require the stream processing nature of our approach. The main advantages of the platforms are its scalability (cloud-based nature) and the expressivity of the event combinations that can be defined (using both real-time and historical data). The platform has been applied in a use case about Personal data management. In this paper we present some results from the validation, focusing on smartphone and social media integration.

The widespread use of social platforms in contemporary organizations leads to the generation of large amount of content shared through various social tools. This information is distributed and often unstructured, making it difficult to fully exploit its value in enterprise context. While Semantic Web technologies allow for publishing meaningful and structured data, major challenges include: (1) real-time integration of distributed social data, and (2) content personalization to identify relevant pieces of information and present them to users to limit the information overload. This research in progress paper draws from an enterprise use case and discussed practices in real-time integration of social data in distributed social platforms. We propose to combine Semantic Web technologies with standardized transport protocols to provide efficient and open source layer for aggregation of distributed social data in an enterprise. We also show how our component can facilitate development of personalised social platforms.

In the paper we present an idea for a ‘Laboratory for Socio-Economic Data Analysis’ aiming to explore the use of extremely large amounts of socio-economic data from several sources of various degrees of heterogeneity. Based on these data, and on the state-of-the-art techniques in knowledge extraction and processing, we intend to deploy robust and high performance data analytics processes. Our goal is to enable the two data-bearing business partners Irish Times and Handelsblatt to use the data they have in conjunction with bigger data from external sources, to increase the value of their products and services offered and to reposition themselves in the market. We focus on two use cases that can produce tangible results in the analysis of socio-economic trends (e.g. unemployment, poverty) and socio-economic events (e.g. election tracking, bankruptcy) enabling better reporting, as well as timely decision support in crisis situations.

An important aspect of integrated care is the provision of personalized patient empowerment and decision support services, especially in case of the chronic patient with comorbidities. The paper discusses a blending of notions of social networks and semantic technologies in order to develop comprehensive personalized and dynamic models of the chronic comorbid patient, their environment and healthcare related issues, procedures, etc., so as to be able to support meaningful patient empowerment and decision support services.

This paper presents a proposed approach to address risk and regulation management within the highly active and volatile financial domain by employing semantic based technologies within a collaborative networks environment. Firstly the problems and motivation are introduced, with accent on big data and high frequency trading issues that are creating major problems to the current software systems. Secondly the state of the art on Big Data, Regulation and Risk Management are presented. Next the FIORD platform architecture is detailed and the envisioned approach explained. Finally conclusions are presented where benefits for real time monitoring are emphasized so high frequency trading irregularities are detected in real time for the benefit of involved financial institutions.