Towards achieving agility in web-based virtual enterprises: a decision-centric approach

Virtual enterprises are groups of loosely connected companies, each providing certain core competencies and working collaboratively towards achieving a common objective. Agility of a web-based virtual enterprise refers to its capability to successfully and rapidly adapt to changes in its operating environment. Although, agility has been addressed in the literature with regard to manufacturing processes and product requirements, design processes have not been leveraged to address agility in web-based virtual enterprises. In this paper, we present a strategy that involves (1) designing the design processes along with products, (2) flexibility in the interfaces between different parts of a virtual enterprise, (3) standardisation and (4) integrated modelling of processes associated with all elements of a value chain. We propose a domain independent decision-centric framework for modelling the value chain processes. It allows a variety of stakeholders to structure, organise and model processes using a common framework. It also balances the need for flexibility of interfaces and the standardisation of information from individual stakeholders, thereby providing adaptability to changes in the web-based virtual enterprise.

[1]  Herbert A. Simon,et al.  The Sciences of the Artificial , 1970 .

[2]  Farrokh Mistree,et al.  THE COMPROMISE DECISION SUPPORT PROBLEM AND THE ADAPTIVE LINEAR PROGRAMMING ALGORITHM , 1998 .

[3]  Russell S. Peak,et al.  STEP, XML, and UML: Complementary Technologies1 , 2004, J. Comput. Inf. Sci. Eng..

[4]  R. Nagel,et al.  Agile Competitors and Virtual Organizations: Strategies for Enriching the Customer , 1994 .

[5]  Timothy W. Simpson,et al.  Toward Mass Customization in the Age of Information: The Case for Open Engineering Systems , 1997 .

[6]  Farrokh Mistree,et al.  Game based design: a game theory based approach to engineering design , 2000 .

[7]  Farrokh Mistree,et al.  HIERARCHICAL SELECTION DECISION SUPPORT PROBLEMS IN CONCEPTUAL DESIGN , 1989 .

[8]  Christiaan J. J. Paredis,et al.  Reusable Design Processes via Modular, Executable, Decision-Centric Templates , 2004 .

[9]  D. McDowell,et al.  Mechanics of linear cellular alloys , 2004 .

[10]  Alan L. Porter,et al.  The Information Revolution: Current and Future Consequences , 1998 .

[11]  Farrokh Mistree,et al.  Decision Support in Concurrent Engineering – The Utility-Based Selection Decision Support Problem , 2005, Concurr. Eng. Res. Appl..

[12]  George A. Hazelrigg,et al.  A Framework for Decision-Based Engineering Design , 1998 .

[13]  Linda C. Schmidt,et al.  Viewing Product Development as a Decision Production System , 2002 .

[14]  Farrokh Mistree,et al.  Facilitating Meta-Design via Separation of Problem, Product, and Process Information , 2005 .

[15]  Richard Y. K. Fung,et al.  An adaptive agile manufacturing control infrastructure based on TOPNs-CS modelling , 2003 .

[16]  Tony Owen.  Design For Manufacture: Strategies, Principles and Techniques by John Corbett, Mike Dooner, John Meleka and Christopher Pym Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Wokingham, UK, 1991, 357 pages, incl. index (£19.95) , 1991, Robotica.

[17]  Paul G. Maropoulos,et al.  Foundations of an agile design methodology , 2006 .

[18]  Steve Caplin,et al.  Principles Of Design , 2011 .

[19]  Farrokh Mistree,et al.  A decision-based perspective for the design of methods for systems design , 1989 .

[20]  Joze Duhovnik,et al.  How to reduce new product development time , 2004 .

[21]  J. Ayers.  Supply-Chain Council , 2000 .

[22]  Henry C. W. Lau,et al.  Virtual agent modeling of an agile supply chain infrastructure , 2003 .

[23]  Farrokh Mistree,et al.  Extending Reusable Decision -Centric Templates to Facilitate Collaboration Using Game Theory , 2006 .

[24]  M. Meyer,et al.  Revitalize Your Product Lines Through Continuous Platform Renewal , 1997 .

[25]  Farrokh Mistree,et al.  Collaborating Multidisciplinary Decision Making Using Game Theory and Design Capability Indices , 2002 .