The growing interest in virtual organizations by both the research and industry sectors is the main motivation behind compiling this collection of original contributions as an introduction to this subject. The text primarily addresses the design and development of infrastructures for industrial Virtual Enterprises (VEs); however, the architecture described and several of the tools and design approaches presented are generic enough to be applied to other kinds of virtual organizations. The key areas described in the book include: reference architectures; safe communications; distributed information management; coordination and workflow; distributed business processes management; standards for electronic data interchange; partners search and VE design and creation; VE configuration and modeling; Inter-operation among technologies; and integration and reengineering of legacy systems. In complement to the technological aspects, the social and organizational impacts are also analyzed and a set of recommendations is included. To cover the main technical issues, the book first describes the details of the architecture and the framework developed within the ESPRIT project PRODNET II. Second, the book covers several alternative development approaches. As such, the book is divided into four parts. The first two parts present the work carried out and the innovative results reached within the PRODNET project. Part I provides an introduction to the main VE concepts and requirements, and Part II addresses the PRODNET approach and solutions. Part III of the book is based on a number of selected contributions from several other advanced international research and development projects. Finally, Part IV summarizes the achievements and suggests directions for future research and development. Although the book is prepared in the framework of the PRO-VE'99 conference and is composed of multi-author chapters, all chapters in Parts I, II, and IV are edited for technical accuracy and style of presentation, to avoid the redundancies found in proceedings books and to facilitate its sequential reading as a textbook. This text is useful for researchers and engineering students in virtual enterprises (production engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering), as well as for engineers and practitioners in manufacturing systems organization and planning.

Table of Contents:
I: A Framework for Virtual Enterprises.- 1. The Virtual Enterprise Concept.- 2. Tendencies and General Requirements for Virtual Enterprises.- 3. Federated Information Management Requirements for Virtual Enterprises.- 4. Coordination and Configuration Requirements in a Virtual Enterprise.- 5. Communication Infrastructure Requirements in a VE.- 6. Socio-Organizational Requirements for a VE.- II: The PRODNET Infrastructure.- 7. The PRODNET Goals and Approach.- 8. The PRODNET Architecture.- 9. Design of the Federated Information Management Architecture for PRODNET.- 10. PRODNET Coordination Module.- 11. The PRODNET Communication Infrastructure.- 12. Support for Electronic Data Interchange.- 13. Step Support for Virtual Enterprises.- 14. Production Planning and Control in a Virtual Enterprise.- 15. Product Data Management.- 16. Distributed Business Process Management.- 17. Selection of Partners for a Virtual Enterprise.- 18. The PRODNET Demonstrator.- III: Other Advanced Approaches.- 19. A Framework for Distributed Information Management in the Virtual Enterprise: The Vega Project.- 20. A Design Process Model to Support Concurrent Project Development in Networks of SMEs.- 21. PerDIS: An Infrastructure for Cooperative Engineering in Virtual Enterprise.- 22. SMEs in the Virtual Enterprise — LOGSME Enables It Support.- 23. Implementing Internet Enabled Virtual Enterprises Using Collaborative Agents.- 24. Agent Communication for Scheduling in the Extended Enterprise.- 25. A Framework for Improving the Quality of Operation in a Virtual Enterprise.- 26. A Brazilian Case of VE Coordination.- 27. A Virtual Enterprise Model, as Proposed within Project ICIV Aimed at Supporting Networked SMEs.- 28. Supply Chain Management Based on Market Mechanism in Virtual Enterprise.- 29. TheValue System Designer — An Infrastructure for Building the Virtual Enterprise.- 30. An Electronic Market Architecture for the Formation of Virtual Enterprises.- 31. Automating Partner Selection for a Virtual Organization.- 32. Definition of a Generic Capability Model for Extended Enterprise Design for Manufacture.- 33. Building the Extended Enterprise on Telework, a Case Study.- 34. Virtual Organisations and the Web Site Resource.- IV: Conclusions and Further Work.- 35. Infrastructures for VE: A Summary of Achievements.- 36. Further Developments in Virtual Enterprises.- Final Acknowledgement.