Distributed analysis of financial and logistic services for manufacturing supply chains

The FLUID-WIN project is developing new business process models and ASP based software tools to enable the smooth integration of logistic services and financial services into a B2B manufacturing network. A significant part of this project is a field study, which involves manufacturers and service providers from many European countries. The goal of the field study is to deliver a generalized model of the as-is-processes, and to identify the economic potentials as well as the barriers in terms of information availability, trust, required process changes, cost etc. Due to the high number of disciplines that have to be involved in this study (manufacturing order control, logistics, banks, factoring, ASP services, ...) and the many languages and cultures found in the enterprises under investigation, a systematic approach was required in order to lead to one single and usable result.