Abstract
Many industrial Virtual Organisations (VOs) operate in manufacturing industry. Their business focus has been on investment product deliveries to industrial customers. Now the needs of their customers are changing. Besides a single delivery, their customers are increasingly interested in the lifecycle services related to their investments. It seems that in many cases, the ability to commit to the lifecycle services is becoming a prerequisite for getting the contract for the investment product delivery. This sets challenges for companies, who make these deliveries as VOs. A VO is a temporary collaboration for a specific task, but lifecycle services require long term commitment. This paper discusses and analyses the ongoing business focus shift from transaction and delivery centric towards lifecycle business centric in the context of industrial manufacturing VOs. The paper identifies challenges that this shift in focus set for VOs. It also analyses some prevailing approaches for VOs to provide lifecycle services. Still, many questions remain open, and thus this paper can be seen as setting some questions for the future research in the area of VOs and industrial lifecycle service business.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Network-Centric Collaboration and Supporting Frameworks |
| Subtitle of host publication | IFIP TC5 WG 5.5 Seventh IFlP Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, 25’27 September 2006, Helsinki, Finland |
| Publisher | Springer |
| Pages | 543-552 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 978-0-387-38269-2 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-0-387-38266-1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2006 |
| MoE publication type | D2 Article in professional manuals or guides or professional information systems or text book material |
