Collaborative Networks in Support of Service-Enhanced Products

The development and support of highly customized and service-enhanced products requires new organizational structures, involving the manufacturers, customers and local suppliers in a process of co-creation. This requires the implementation of the glocal enterprise notion with value creation from global networked operations and invol ving global supply chain management, product-service linkage, and management of distributed manufacturing units. An approach based on cloud-computing and advanced collaboration spaces is proposed for such contexts. As application scenario the manufacturing and life cycle support of solar parks is considered.