THE ADVANTAGES OF USING A COLLABORATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE IN VIRTUAL ENTERPRISES

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to provide a collaboration support for small and medium enterprises which cannot or do not want to fulfill a major contract alone. In that case, in order to better meet a higher external demand, the managers are willing to subcontract parts of their contracts even to competitors. This approach is illustrated by a business-to-business interaction, being proposed a sample scenario where partners are autonomous gas stations grouped in a virtual enterprise (VE). In such a VE, we present a schematic example of a collaboration process using negotiation and coordination mechanisms that we proposed in this paper.

Keywords

• SME
• B2B interaction
• subcontracting
• cooperation
• collaboration