Managing complexity in industrial collaborations within tool & die industry

Abstract

Joining collaborations and maintaining relationships within these has become a major concern for managers in industrial companies. This change to a large extent arises due to the globalisation of markets and the ongoing specialisation of companies, fostered by the possibilities of information technology and data communication. However, such a structural change requires adaptations by companies to fit the characteristics of industrial networks. In particular; the increasing complexity of collaborations in highly dynamic environments oftentimes is underestimated. This paper shows an approach to cope with this increasing complexity by the application of principles of complex systems from various sciences to collaborative enterprise networks regarded as socio-technical systems, considering the tool and die industry as example. © 2006 International Federation for Information Processing.