Knowledge Supply for SME Networks: Application Cases and Selected Technical Approaches

Abstract

Current trends of globalisation and increased competition require new forms of organisation and work support. Especially in small and medium sized enterprises (SME), the competitiveness and future market position of an enterprise is closely related to the ability of cooperating with partners in SME networks or virtual supplier organisations. In complex work processes with a number of distributed partners, high requirements with respect to competence and a lot of rules and guidelines to be obeyed; detecting and sharing knowledge among different members of networked organizations is an important issue. Based on an empirical investigation regarding the demands of SME and illustrating this demand with industrial cases, this paper investigates two technical approaches supporting knowledge supply in networked organizations: enterprise modeling and self-organisation of flexible supply networks. These approaches are presented with related work and their limits and potentials.