Development and management of East-West European extended enterprises

Abstract

This paper describes a case study based research on current and best practices for collaboration management in manufacturing extended enterprises in an East-West European context. Case study findings show characteristic development paths leading from a simple customer-supplier relationship to the extended enterprise as well as major challenges resulting from cultural, technological and organizational variety. Typical issues that need to be addressed at the different development stages are deduced and clustered in a management framework for the extended enterprises in this special set up. First and second hand case studies are transformed into a best practice guideline for managemell1 matters like collaborative strategy. process alignment. common project management. knowledge transfer. communication and cultural diversity. Best practices cover suggestions for collaborative business in product development. production and sales. © 2004 by Springer Science+Business Media New York.