Flexible coordination and information sharing for virtual enterprises in PRODNET

Flexible coordination and configuration is a major aspect in the development of open support infrastructures for Industrial Virtual Enterprises, particularly in the context of small and medium size enterprises. The steps involved in the creation and configuration of an infrastructure to support the life cycle of a virtual enterprise are introduced. The specific approach of hierarchical coordination infrastructure, being partly developed and applied to the Esprit PRODNET II project is presented. The coordination/information-sharing kernel is introduced as the composition of a hierarchical (workflow-like) activity management approach with a distributed/federated database management system.