Finance, Logistics and Production Integration Domain by Web-based Interaction Network

In order to stay competitive, many European companies started to purchase from the Far East. This endangers the health of the European economy in two dimensions: The European enterprises might loose a significant market share and they might decide to transfer the major part of their value creation to the Far East, also. The new situation of the EU-25 opens new chances: Eight of the ten new member states can be considered "former east European" (FEE).

They offer products at lower prices,and have advantages in terms of skills, lower geographic distance and comparable culture and background. Today, there are sophisticated approaches to optimize the supply chain execution and the transport between companies. However, they are not integrated, thus increasing cost and decreasing options to exploit all flexibility. This was not critical as long as suppliers and customers have been geographically close, but it becomes most important for FEE companies. Analogous, there is merely no integration between the order management and the financial exchange between companies.

FLUID-WIN will implement an innovative, interdisciplinary and dynamic business model. This model will enable the old European manufacturing companies to keep their ability of quick response, achieving competitive prices by integrating FEE suppliers. This model has to be supported through easy-to-adopt e-commerce applications. Though efficient models for the supply chain execution are available nowadays as B2B operation, the great challenge is the integration of the logistics and financial services without installing thousands of peer-to-peer relationships.

The objective is to develop means for a B2(B2B) service, based on ASP, providing the possibility to adapt a service into a complete existing network instead of installing relations to the network members. The project is driven integrating research from the EU-25, including Malta (as a European finance focus point), FEE and "old" European countries.

For more information, please see: http://www.fluid-win.de/

Markus Rabe

Head of Department, Project Manager

e-mail:markus.rabe@ipk.fhg.de

Fraunhofer IPK, Corporate Management Division