Emerging Trends and Research Challenges

The methods by which distributed agents, from micro- and nanosensors to computers, machines, humans, and enterprises, interact and collaborate are being rapidly transformed. The concepts, theoretical foundations, and applications of collaborative e-Work discussed in this book are both enablers and direct results of automation of collaborative processes, activities, and interactions among the distributed entities. The future of production and service systems depends highly on the effective design and engineering of collaborative e-Work, and their integration into their design, i.e., automated and collaborative systems. The principles, models, and techniques of CCT, the Collaborative Control Theory (Nof, 2007), as explained in the previous chapters, provide insights for design, and supports execution and control through optimized e-Activities. The future challenges are also concerned with the evaluation and assessment of new e-Criteria, such as integrity, viability, collaboration-ability, survivability, and so on. This chapter summarizes and briefly discusses the emerging trends and challenges of next generation e-Work, e-Business, and e-Service systems (simply e-Systems) from a variety of perspectives. The objective is to bring up new open questions and research challenges, and provide organized insights for future research and development.