A Planning and Scheduling Methodology for the Virtual Enterprise

Abstract

Virtual enterprises consisting of geographically dispersed, independent units are a reality in the global economy. These units concentrate on core technologies and create partner networks for the design, manufacturing and sale of their products. This chapter documents a methodology, more flexible and efficient than the more traditional techniques, to schedule activities in virtual enterprises and enterprise networks. The presented technique that stepwise searches for improved activity schedules has the advantage that in any stage of the iteration process a resource-feasible schedule is available. Investing in network and computation capacity will result in more efficient schedules. The virtual enterprise unit will view the platform as a time-phased capacity trading marketplace.