Kim Jansson

Towards Performance Measurement in Virtual Organizations

Traditional Performance Measurement methodologies are designed to assess efficiency of intra-organizational processes. Those models are applicable for single companies or static networks running a streamlined set of performance indicators. Under the given changes in production paradigms, single enterprises and more static, long-lasting networks, e.g. Supply-Chains in the automotive industry, lose significance to dynamic, order-specifically configured Virtual Organizations that highly depend upon the efficiency of their collaborative processes. Measuring the performance of those processes is not feasible with traditional PM methodologies or at least an extension of those. Ongoing efforts in creating a PM framework for Virtual Organizations are facing several research challenges. This paper describes and analyzes challenges towards a Performance Measurement methodology for Virtual Organizations.

The Extended Products Paradigm, An Introduction

This paper explains and illustrates the extended product paradigm. The main dimensions to extend a product to be considered are the product life cycle, the range of product related information and the resources requested to provide extended (i.e. enterprise networks) on the market. The paper is based on work done in the European Information Society Technologies (IST) project Extended Products in Dynamic Enterprises - EXPIDE. The project objective is to bring together research projects, stakeholders (such as suppliers, manufacturers, consultants, service and technology providers, etc.) involved and interested in the provision of extended products, etc. The project EXPIDE aims to identify future value creation potentials as well as future needs related to the extended product paradigm. The Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) Global Engineering and Manufacturing in Enterprise Networks -GLOBEMEN project contributes to the specification of the Extended Product. The GLOBEMEN project results, especially in the sales and service life cycle phases, illustrate in practice the extended product paradigm. This paper delivers examples from the GLOBEMEN project.

Supporting collaborative project management

This article presents an approach for collaborative project management in which not only the project but also the management is collaborative. The focus is on the support of collaboration and communication in globally distributed projects. Several project management tools exist for planning and monitoring of project tasks. Other tools exist to support information exchange and technical interoperability. However, few solutions are available for the strengthening of intangible assets and supporting the common understanding of the project objectives, requirements and practices. For this objective, ‘Collaborative project alignment’ is defined in this article, together with a model and services to support the identification of the alignment aims and bridging possible gaps. The project alignment model and the related services, a project alignment booster, have been developed in the context of COIN-project (FP7 EU 216256), and relying on results from this project. The first evaluation of the tools has been made in relation to large engineering projects.

Governance And Management Of Virtual Organizations

A Virtual Organization (VO) consists of independent organizations collaborating for a common goal. Towards the customers and the outer world, they are assumed to look and behave as they were a single organization. Proper governance principles and operative management are needed in order to achieve the objectives. The focus is on the enforcement of the collaboration between independent partners with their own internal aims and own internal processes and management means. The paper presents results and solutions to support the management of virtual organizations in a dynamic environment.

Challenges in the Management of Virtual Organizations

Virtual organizations (VOs) are considered to be an answer to tightening requirements of cost-effectiveness, time and quality, especially in a global environment. In addition, it is expected that collaboration within VOs contributes to flexibility, agility, customer orientation and decrease of risks. However, these objectives are not achieved automatically. The management of independent entities with individual, sometimes even contradictory, aims is a difficult task containing uncertainty. The Inter-organizational distribution of processes and activities may lead to high coordination costs, delays in deliveries, quality problems, information leaks and loss of knowledge. To prevent the problems, proactive VO management is needed. The paper discusses the challenges for the development of proactive management. The main experience behind the paper comes from the one-of-a-kind manufacturing.

On Services for Collaborative Project Management

This paper presents an approach for collaborative project management. The focus is on the support of collaboration, communication and trust. Several project management tools exist for monitoring and control the performance of project tasks. However, support of important intangible assets is more difficult to find. In the paper a leadership approach is identified as a management means and the use of new IT technology, especially social media for support of leadership in project management is discussed.

On the management of collaborative SME networks

Abstract Although networking and collaboration in networks have got much attention recently, management issues have got less attention. A solid basis to support management and control of Virtual Organizations (VOs) is missing. The VO consists of independent organizations collaborating for a common goal. Towards the customers and the outer world, they are assumed to look and behave as they were a single organization. The challenges on the VO management come from this expectation. The partners are independent with own internal aims and own processes. Neither is the management means the same ones as in a single organization.

An Innovation and Engineering Maturity Model for Marine Industry Networks

There is only one way for the maritime cluster in Finland to survive. It has to be ready to respond rapidly to changes from the outside world. In order to prepare for the future, design companies and engineering consultants in the marine sector have to assess their current collaboration competence and continuously invest in increasing their engineering capability. It is becoming increasingly important to manage and develop competences for future new business environments. This paper presents a new approach to expanding the use of maturity models with the assessment of innovation and engineering capability. The paper reports on the development work of the new Innovation and Engineering Maturity Model and experience of using the model to identify fundamental and urgent competence development needs.

Virtual Organisations in the Service Industry

The provision and delivery of a product is not sufficient alone; in addition the customers expect value adding service around the product. The delivery of value adding services imposes a strong need to create networks and various forms of collaboration to deliver integrated product-services configurations.

Promoting Remanufacturing through Collaboration

Remanufacturing is an ultimate form of recycling by manufacturing “good as new” products from used products. Through remanufacturing, materials and energy can be saved and less waste is produced. However, at present, the application of remanufacturing is common only in specific industrial fields and geographic areas. This paper describes challenges identified and discusses how collaboration and networking of companies can support the implementation of remanufacturing. In addition to cases described in literature, the study uses information collected from Finnish case companies operating in remanufacturing.