Núcleo de Gestão para Sustentabilidade

The effective creation of Virtual Enterprises emerges after the development of: (i) a new working culture and (ii) a computer-enabled infrastructure supporting inter-operation of companies. These developments are facilitated if the potential partners belong to a Virtual Organisation Breeding Environment (VBE). This paper describes a framework to create and support the life cycle of Virtual Enterprises operating (relying on a VBE) in the mould and die sector. The proposed framework is called AmbianCE and it is the result of a 5-year research project in the field of Collaborative Network Organisations. The AmbianCE framework has been validated in a Brazilian VBE called Virfebras. A peculiar characteristic of Virfebras is that many of its members are competitors.

Referência: VALLEJOS, R.; LIMA, C.; VARVAKIS, G. Towards the development of a framework to create a virtual organisation breeding environment in the mould and die sector. J Intell Manuf, v.18, n.5, 2007.

Artigo Completo

This paper describes a framework to create and support the life cycle of Virtual Enterprises (VEs) relying on a Virtual Organisation Breeding Environment (VBE). The proposed framework is the outcome of a five-year research project in the field of collaborative network organisations. Such a framework was developed to be applied to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and was validated in a Brazilian work group called VIRFEBRAS. A peculiar characteristic of VIRFEBRAS is that its members are competitors and work in the mould and die sector. This work proposes the creation of an environment where social capital, competence and the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are developed to facilitate the preparedness of candidate companies aiming to become members of future VEs. This paper is structured as follows: an introduction, the description of the framework to create the VBE, the validation of the framework, the key findings and business impacts and the conclusions.

Referência: VALLEJOS, R.; LIMA, C.; VARVAKIS, G. A framework to create a virtual organisation breeding environment for small and medium enterprises. Int. J. Services and Operations Management, v.6, n. 3, 2010.