Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

All over the world Distributed Generation is seen as a valuable help to get cleaner and more efficient electricity. Under this context distributed generators, owned by different decentralized players can provide a significant amount of the electricity generation. To get negotiation power and advantages of scale economy, these players can be aggregated giving place to a new concept: the Virtual Power Producer. Virtual Power Producers are multi-technology and multi-site heterogeneous entities. Virtual Power Producers should adopt organization and management methodologies so that they can make Distributed Generation a really profitable activity, able to participate in the market. In this paper we address the integration of Virtual Power Producers into an electricity market simulator — MASCEM — as a coalition of distributed producers.

Global competition forces enterprises to concentrate on their core competencies while transforming themselves to participate in emerging inter-enterprise formations following the virtual enterprise (VE) paradigm. VE is a form that offers high flexibility, agility and resilience for enterprises to survive and prosper in the globalized economy. This paper introduces the real world VE that uses agent-based software to support agility. This research is conducted as a case study in the business network, which consist of several small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and one focal company operating in the steel manufacturing industry in Northern Finland. The new VE, called Steel Net is aiming towards global markets with the support of effective information sharing.

Reference models for Collaborative Networked Organizations (CNOs) is under development, but Enterprise Architecture Modeling Languages (EAMLs) for CNOs are very few. Lack of reference models makes it difficult for people to communicate with each other and lack of EAMLs also makes it difficult to implement information systems supporting CNOs. For enrichment of reference models and EAMLs for CNO we develop modeling constructs of an EAML. It supports (1) multi-level modeling based on OMG’s Model-Driven Architecture for expressive power and ease of implementation, and (2) multi-foeus modeling based on Zachman Framework for completeness of modeling.

One of the most attractive aspects of virtual enterprises is their agility: the inherent ability to adapt and evolve in response to changing market conditions. Evolving VirtuE is a formal framework within which such agility can be realized. Through the concepts of enterprise time, activity logging, and log mining, the recent behavior and performance of an enterprise may be studied, and corresponding evolutionary steps can be induced. These steps may be intended to benefit the operation of individual enterprise members, as well the enterprise as a whole. In addition, we examine enterprise creation, a period of rapid evolution that concludes when the enterprise reaches stability and begins transacting its business activities.

Most companies are hardly ready to address current business challenges as far as their knowledge resources are concerned. Instead of making best use of their non-tangible assets they keep their knowledge to themselves. This effect is even stronger in virtual enterprises, which provide value to the user only when they combine their knowledge resources. There is a clear lack of a methodology to turn knowledge resources into profitable goods by a suitable business model. This article presents an approach to address this issue. A case study is presented for the automotive after-sales service sector taken from the European Research project MYCAREVENT.

In this contribution approaches for the distribution of profit within networked production structures to the different network members are introduced and discussed. In this context exact rules are indispensable for the success of a cooperation because profits are the main target of all economic activities. In this context three influencing parameters are considered: a fixed share, a value-adding-dependent share and a profit expectation dependent share whereby the last mentioned parameter represents the most important variable.

Nowadays, the advantages of virtual enterprises and collaborative networks are well known by scientists and professional communities. Despite the advantages, only a few networks continue running businesses after stopping the governmental subsides. One of the reasons is the lack of a model that evaluates the benefit from the firm ’s point of view. The objective of this work is to develop a model that estimates the business benefits in horizontal collaborative networks. We propose a method for evaluating the benefits for a firm to be enrolled in a collaborative network. This method can also be extended to the selection of partner. The approach is based on a combination of a product realisation graph and core competencies model.

The way in which firms innovate ideas and bring them to market is undergoing a fundamental change. Useful knowledge is increasingly dispersed outside the firm’s boundaries and the exceptionally fast time to market for many products and services suggest that some very different organising principles for innovation are needed. These developments have led to an increased interest in the electronic network of practice concept to facilitate innovation. This paper argues that innovative behaviour in electronic networks of practice is determined by three interacting systems — individual motivations, network communication structure, and the social context of the network. The theoretical position of the interactive process theoiy of innovation is used to support this claim.

Support for human-to-human interactions over a network is still insufficient, particularly for professional virtual communities (PVCs). Among other limitations, neither adaptation capabilities of humans, nor social aspects related to leverage are taken into account in existing models for collaboration processes in PVC. This paper presents a model for adaptive human collaboration. A key element of this model is the modeling of power during the adaptation of collaboration processes modeled as social protocols.

This paper aims at presenting the preliminary results of a research work that seeks to understand the users’ response to semantic based technologies, in the context of enterprise sponsored virtual communities. The research follows a qualitative methodology based on an action research approach. It particularly focuses on the socio-cognitive processes that underlie users’ learning and acquisition methods when training and interacting with a new knowledge management approach based on semantically enabled technologies in a collaborative, and sometimes virtual, learning/working environment. The outcomes of this research are expected to provide an assessment framework for a deeper level understanding of the cognition process in what concerns the evolution of individual’s knowledge, opinions, beliefs, and thoughts about ontology based systems.