**5. Conclusions and future work**

The subsystem of underlying the decision and simulating the alternative solutions should respond on the automatic reprogramming, basing on conflict analysis and by using one of the planning-reprogramming strategies. The decision should take into account the execution delays, and should be able to anticipate the potential distortions that might influence the re‐ quirement's concluding. The protocol includes a series of interactive steps, by sending mes‐ sages of recommendation towards providers, by issuing new solutions of making efficient the production process, of selecting partners and of reprogramming the procedures of main‐ taining the delivering data, as well as real time evaluation of the partial results. There are various possibilities of reprogramming, as following: automatic, semi-automatic and man‐ ual. A potential conflict should affect at the very most the BP, under the responsibility of

The Conflict Detection Subsystem is an entity which receives information regarding the pro‐ duction, and it is permanently supervised, in order to check the information accuracy on planning or established terms on deliveries, as well as the execution stages. In the case a conflict is detected, this will be identified and transferred towards the module of taking de‐

The control subsystem performs a series of actions as regards the carrying into effect a deci‐ sion chosen as alternative solution. The user of the VE coordination website will work to‐ gether with DBPM (regarded as DSS, also) and will be able to simulate an extended set of

The contract provided within a VE scenario will specify the rights and obligations within the relationships established by enterprises (clauses including the judicial, technical and finan‐ cial information) and moreover, the responsibilities towards conventional systems, the clauses of supervision (access to information, in the view of monitoring it). The cooperation between enterprises regards the agreement or consensus over the set of information to be

Customizing the supervision clauses signifies one of the first procedures than a user should apply immediately after a VE is formed. The user should specify periodically reported infor‐ mation (for instance, the manufacturing data, the produced quantities, the demands status, the information transparency, transferring decisions and in parallel, supplementary docu‐

It is important to give some examples of Virtual Breeding Environments (VBEs) as the fol‐ lowing: Virtuelle Fabrik (consortium in machine building sector between Switzerland and Germany); Swiss Microtech (micromechanics, collaboration with China); ISOIN (aeronauti‐ cal cluster); CeBeNetwork (integrated portfolio for aeronautical engineering between France, UK and Germany); ConSEN Euro – Group (cluster of European SMEs in Informa‐ tion Society Technologies); Infranet – Partners (network of SMEs in Internet solution do‐ main). As Professional Virtual Communities (PVCs) we can take into consideration the following examples: Projectwerk (4000 freelancers and SMEs); Elance; freelancer; associa‐

provider under discussion, and only slightly the other VE members.

provided, so that the remote supervision will be enabled.

mentations or sending the supervision data).

cisions as answer on those detected.

alternative decisions.

108 Decision Support Systems

tions of professionals etc.

The current situation in the aftermath of the global crisis and the European debt crisis, mar‐ kets are highly volatile and very sensitive to the social, political, economical, business, tech‐ nical, organizational but also other factors dealing with the workforce. The success of a VE solution depends heavily on innovation (including innovation on management) since they are market-oriented organizations. These vehicles should react quickly and reconfigure to satisfy new market demands and customer trends in an agile manner.

Although ontologies specifically for VEs have not been addressed, we believe that ontolo‐ gies for enterprises, in general, will address issues that need to be addressed by VE ontolo‐ gies too. It is important to highlight that the need for ontology is mostly due to information exchange among people and computers and to support interoperability, which is one of the most important issues in VEs.

The modern business environment has been characterized by the networking interconnec‐ tion, the cooperation related to disrupted technologies, where one might emphasize the in‐ terest growth on intelligent platforms of common architecture, able to provide valuable elements. The intelligent coordination will require taking into account the entire SCM, with‐ in an intelligent organizational environment (Pereira, Klen, 2000).

The modern enterprise should benefit from new, intelligent, adaptive instruments of deci‐ sion, capable to: solve complex problems; to realize efficient interconnection/ interoperation (modularity); to offer efficient/ quick solutions for the distributed problems in a more and more complex environment with highly volatile markets; to integrate, fuse and filter infor‐ mation from different, distributed informational sources; to offer better performances (speed, security, expandability to operate with information and knowledge); to offer better clarity and simplicity in analysis; to offer scalability and, in general adaptability of the appli‐ cation for an optimal use of resources.

DSS is more than informational product that implement a method for decision making. DSS is based on multitude components in interaction and it integrates informatics modules but also specific techniques for decisions, and communications. The main characteristics of DSS are: applicability, expected benefits, utility and relevance, addressability. The AI ingredi‐ ents, such as the expert systems, the knowledge based systems, learning abilities networks have been underlying on different types of AI technologies and coul offer better perform‐ ance on mixing with DSS.

The DSS-VE/VO offers advanced coordination facilities, able to support the means of achiev‐ ing, providing and managing the information related to production within VE/ VO. This system will embed the SCM and ILM concepts in the context of Integrated Logistics Man‐ agement (ILM). This system should be modular, allowing to enterprises to operate better within an integrated virtual environment, underlying on subsystems of supervision or mon‐ itoring the DBP and DSS execution, meaning the configuration of the supervising provision.

The DSS-VE/VO systems will allow efficient tasks regarding: the supervision of SCM de‐ mands, underlying on the supervision clauses associated to contracts; the interactive sup‐ port on analyzing and solving the conflicts on processing demands by taking reactive decisions; the partners' configuration; the support on re-planning share by means of the ba‐ sic programming actions within VE; integration with the cooperation platform (data integra‐ tion; security communications; inter-functionality or interaction). Taking into account the complexity of DSS-VE/VO systems, innovative issues should be investigated, especially to‐ wards the line of intelligent coordination.

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The future developments of the concepts linked to VE (new assessment models based on ability to add real value, changes in the competition nature between firms, new possibilities for integration/ mixing with DSS) should consider the following future directions of re‐ search: the development of VE platforms dedicated for SMEs and startups; the specification of operational characteristics and the analysis of the distributed architectures; the develop‐ ment of the new methods of management, coordination, cooperation and negotiations be‐ tween VEs; special focus on social aspects regarding the development of VEs. Other aspects to cover in future work should take into account: the coordination functionalities such as distributed resource management and scheduling and the new role of negotiation in a VE as a central task in the formation of a VE/ VO but also in the operation and success of these innovative vehicles.
