Virtual Organizations in Manufacturing: Trends and challenges

The Virtual Organizations paradigm is gaining a growing importance in manufacturing as an instrument to help companies face the challenges of fast evolving market conditions. In this context an overview of current trends in areas such as virtual enterprises, industry clusters, virtual communities, remote supervision and virtual laboratories, and required infrastructures is presented. Fast shop-floor reengineering is also discussed as an important requirement for the participation of manufacturing enterprises in agile virtual organizations. Some of the major open research challenges for various types of virtual organizations are identified.

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