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Smart Forms of Collaboration among Inter-Networked Manufacturing SMEs

Obiettivo

10 SMEs from 4 countries (Greece, Portugal, Germany, Norway) have identified a common business problem: in order to improve their competitiveness on the market they need to establish new smart forms of strategical cooperation. Three typical partnerships have been identified as being of the highest relevance to be examined in the pilots. SMEs have detected that they have to considerably improve the coordinated planning and monitoring of their collaborative work. Therefore, they have to introduce proven IST solutions supporting, planning and monitoring across virtual enterprises based on information/knowledge sharing. The project will be based on the common methodology successfully applied by 3 catalysts in the scope of previous projects. It is likely that the solutions identified in the project will be replicable by a large number of SMEs in Europe. One of the objectives is to disseminate the results obtained to both regional and European audiences.

Objectives:
The main common business objectives of the 10 SMEs in the consortium are:
(a) to maintain and further improve their competitiveness on the market based on innovative collaborative work within an inter-networked organisation;
(b) to identify and eliminate bottlenecks in the current, traditional forms of mutual cooperation and find ways to resolve problems related to resistance to a stronger, active partnership
(c) to identify the appropriate forms of collaborative work
(d) to improve their ability to exploit the opportunities offered by the digital economy by improvement of skills and to prepare themselves for further networking with other companies.

For the 3 catalysts the objectives are to further enhance the existing BEP methodology especially in reference to best practices in the collaborative work of inter-networked organisations, based on the experience to be gained within the project and on the experience exchange with other catalysts.

Work description:
Three typical partnerships have been identified as being of the highest relevance for the 10 SMEs.
The new forms of collaboration to be introduced concern active partnerships among
(a) companies in the supply chain,
(b) companies dynamically sharing the manufacturing of common products (distributed manufacturing chain) and
(c) companies producing complementary products, all with the common business objective to improve services to their customers by offering a wider spectrum of products and better costs/quality/time conditions.

In order to achieve the stated business objectives, SMEs have identified that they have to considerably improve their co-ordinated planning and scheduling of resources as well as the monitoring of their collaborative work. The project will be based on the common BEP-methodology successfully applied by three catalysts in the scope of previous projects.
The main phases of the project will be:
(a) analysis of the current practices in SMEs and development models for dynamic networked organisations which best suit the specific needs of the SMEs;
(b) identification of the optimal organisation of co-ordinated planning and monitoring of work in progress;
(c) selection of proven, easy-to use IST solutions supporting co-operation and flexible co-ordinated planning and monitoring across virtual enterprises based on information/knowledge sharing, taking into account language/cultural diversity,
(d) pilot implementations of the open, interoperable IST solutions and platforms for flexible working between organisations and testing the selected co-operation models; this will include measurement of the success of the selected solutions, which will serve as a basis for further elaboration of the co-operation strategy.

It is likely that the solutions identified in the scope of the project will be replicable by a large number of SMEs in Europe. One of the objectives is to disseminate the results obtained to both regional and European audiences.

Milestones:
M1 (Month 3): Analysis and definition of conceptual models for collaboration.
M2 (Month 9): Implementation planning: definition of improved organisation of collaborative work, specification and selection of IST solutions; initial versions of exploitation plans.
M3 (Month 18): Implementation of pilots and results of initial measurements of success; elaborated strategies for further collaboration; enhancement of methodology; final version of exploitation plans; dissemination activities.

Invito a presentare proposte

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Coordinatore

UNIVERSITY OF PATRAS
Contributo UE
Nessun dato
Indirizzo
RION PATRAS
26500 PATRAS
Grecia

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Costo totale
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Partecipanti (12)