The paper presents one of the most interesting collaborative networked organisations in Italy, namely Gruppo Poligrafico Tiberino (GPT), the first organisation that adopts the governance model with the Virtual Development Office (VDO) structure. The VDO is an innovative model that introduces products/services innovation through collaboration between companies, with a particular focus on small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In effect, the existing forms of collaboration are evolving towards the direction of extending the classical collaboration fields of supply chains including phases like product and service development. However, when collaboration is established exclusively among SMEs, the introduction of new products/services becomes much more difficult. This is due to the lack of the actions of a leader firm, that is, a big company that is able to innovate. The VDO model is introduced to overcome this limit, and to stimulate innovation in collaborative networks of SMEs. GPT network is constituted by 21 companies belonging to the paper converting, packaging and logistics sectors. The nature of the collaboration is based on a long-term strategy vision, giving to the network more competitive advantages, with respect to the classical collaborative alliances in Italy, such as industrial districts, cooperatives, consortiums or temporary associations. Started from a national research project, currently it is a very fast growing up reality; the significant results achieved and the strong interests coming from Institutions, Ministries and Universities make GPT a real success both under the industrial and the academic perspectives.

Abstract. The considerable benefits brought up by strategic alliances and diverse types of long term Collaborative Networked Organizations (CNOs) are nowadays widely recognized. There is an increasing demand in the industrial world for concretely implement new forms of collaborations. For example, demand often comes from pre-existent form of clusters or local productive arrangements, that want to evolve to more efficient forms of collaboration, or from small and medium enterprises that are facing a crisis, and look at collaboration with other enterprises as almost the last chance to survive. In general, variety of motivations in collaborating implies variety of missions of potential collaborations, that in turn requires the choice of an appropriate form of Collaborative Network aligned to the mission statement. This paper addresses the problem to define a methodology for analyzing potential pool of partners and for identifing the mission, the form, the governance structure and the value drivers of long term strategic alliance that would bring highest benefits to the partners. Three different forms of CNOs are considered: the Virtual organizations Breeding Environment (VBE), the Virtual Development Office (VDO) and the T-Holding.

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Over the last decade, supply chain coordination has attracted much attention in the context of industrial logistics systems, because of the role played in production support logistics. There is a growing interest in the analysis and measurement of performances, because performance analysis allows us to build supporting decision tools for the design, planning and management of the supply chain. This paper presents an analytical approach for performance analysis based on a decomposition principle. The approach is applied to a serial supply chain that consists of two levels of suppliers, a production plant and a distribution centre, and operates as a pull system. This configuration is typical for bulk materials such as grain. The method allows us to approximately calculate performance indicators (such as customer satisfaction and inventory levels) taking into account all the interactions between the different echelons of the supply chain. The accuracy of the approximations is confirmed by the results obtained via a simulation model. Numerical analysis allows us to outline interesting and non-intuitive behaviour of the performance indicators for different stages of the supply chain.

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