The concept of virtual manufacturing enterprise operation as a green complex system

Abstract

This paper focuses on the idea of virtual enterprise (VE) creation, deployment and functioning support through the use of Green IT concept. The Green IT is regarded as a complex of innovative techniques, processes and materials used in material production and based on the principles of sustainable development. Specifically, the VE requires the implementation of the Green IT as a basic concept because the vast majority of business processes on VE are based on information search, collection, storage, delivery and dissemination. The comprehensive use of the concept of Green IT is directly related to increasing the efficiency of business processes mentioned above. A VE is formed via selection of the appropriate organizational and manufacturing resources at different enterprises and their integration with web-based technologies. The VE members possess their production assets and perform the correspondent operations within the chain of the production process. Thus, one of the problems is to allocate these operations between individual VE members in the most effective way possible with respect to a predetermined criterion. The authors describe informational support for the main lifecycle (LC) stages of the VE from the standpoint of the Green IT that decreases the environmental stress during the VE operation. The evaluation of economic efficiency of the developed approach for managing VE LC within Green IT concept is given. Constructed a spiral model for evaluation of VE LC, which allows to making quick and flexible management decisions of whether or not to invest into further upgrades and continue production. It is shown that in this case integrated resource production efficiency increases, economic risks and damage caused to the environment during production decreases.