Order acquiring and processing in the virtual factory

Abstract

Setting up virtual organizations such as the virtual factory are a new way of doing business where companies can successfully cooperate to address new markets they will never be able to address alone. This paper presents the order acquiring and - processing done by a web-based intranet platform. Through intranet communication, all partner companies can post projects and seek possible cooperation partners. From the internet portal a customer can place a demand to the virtual factory. which is then transmitted trough an internal order management system to all partners. In a next step all partner can see the demand or can try to satisfy the order. The paper shows that in a virtual organization, roles and rules are very important issues besides ICT. The paper also presents how the net2net communication between three other virtual factories in Switzerland and Germany are built using the same concept. © 2004 by Springer Science+Business Media New York.