Supporting networked organizations: the EXTERNAL approach to extended enterprises

Extended enterprise (EE) and virtual enterprise (VE) are two emerging forms of dynamic networked organizations. The EXTERNAL project addresses the challenges met in forming and operating a virtual enterprise, characterized by a dynamic and often time-limited co-operation between its business partners. The goal of EXTERNAL is to provide solutions that make this collaboration effective and repeatable. The EXTERNAL approach to EE engineering and operation is to create, analyze, execute, and manage live EE models across an EE knowledge sharing network. The main results of the project include visual EE modeling languages, an EE engineering methodology, a layered EE Infrastructure and a set of tools supporting the infrastructure, the models and derived solutions. This approach and its resulting products will be tested in three use cases.