VERITAS - Supporting Virtual Enterprises for Integrated Industrial Solutions

VERITAS is a Specific Support Actions (SSA) project, combining elements of analysis, fact finding, monitoring and evaluation with trans-national knowledge transfer and take-up related services. Its overall objective is to increase the dynamics of European manufacturing companies by supporting their transformation towards agile enterprises. The ambitious goal is to actively help machine tool companies with high production-related costs to understand and implement the concept of virtual enterprises, enabled through business process orientation, a new business culture and supported by the use of Information Technology, in particular cross-organisation Work Management solutions.

VERITAS' concrete and verifiable objective will be the permanent creation of three stable networks. VERITAS will not force a VE initiative within its time horizon, but will provide all the necessary prerequisites and knowledge to form a VE in the future. This includes comprehensive training in configuration, co-operation and competence management for VE as well as the development of tools to monitor and manage VEs.

The specific activities and outputs of VERITAS will be:

• Accumulation of dissemination and training material on VEs based on state-of-the art findings from theory, applied research and best practise.
• In-depth interviews with selected VE initiatives on specific VE problems such as the trade-off between trust and control, competition and co-operation.
• Establishment of virtual industry clusters - actively involving member companies of the participating manufacturing associations - that are the potential basis for configuring virtual enterprises.
• Assignment and coaching of the relevant roles for the cooperation network - brokers, in/outsourcing managers and auditors.
• Creation and documentation of rules for VEs together with the VIC members.
• Support of trust building and business culture transformation necessary in VEs through coaching and use of different tools.
• Evaluation of the trust building initiatives and tools in a survey.
• Set-up of a multi-lingual online portal, consisting of:
• Extranet section for members of the VIC, including
  • Virtual Community to support social relationships and trust building for members.
  • knowledge community for sharing information resources and innovation.
  • Access to VERITAS information system and sample work management tool.
  • Support tools for negotiations between network partners.
• Online learning modules for self training; publicly accessible.
• General content (including the project approach, findings, the agility evaluation method and the implementation guide).
  • Set-up of database structure and ontology as a comprehensive information system for the network partners' competencies and as a selection tool for VE initiatives.
  • Deployment of sample work management application across companies and integration with existing ICT infrastructures to enable communication, coordination and cooperation of VEs.
  • Training and support of companies in use and integration of the application.
  • Development of a survey instrument to evaluate the work management solution and its actual evaluation. The tool should also be reusable to evaluate similar products.
  • VERITAS contact point throughout the project for any inquiries concerning the technology or other training content.
  • VERITAS agility evaluation handbook documenting the generic steps for creating the VICs and lessons learned.
  • VERITAS implementation guide.

   

  for more information : www.archimedia.gr

   

  Project contact

  Dr. Epaminondas Stamos

  20 Zan Moreas str., Athens - 11741, GREECE

  Tel: +30-210-9233084

  Fax: +30-210-9233086