Rapid prototyping of virtual production networks in SMEs

Nowadays many companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), specialize in a limited field of production. It requires forming virtual production networks of cooperating enterprises to manufacture better, faster and cheaper. Apart from that, some production orders cannot be realized, because there may not be a company of sufficient production potential. In this case the virtual production networks of cooperating companies can realize these production orders. These networks have larger production capacity and many different resources. Therefore it can realize many more production orders than only one of them. Such organization allows for executing high quality product. The maintenance costs of production capacity and used resources are not so high. The productivity is higher in all production systems in the network. The average costs of these systems are smaller and companies are more competitive.