No abstract

Industrial managers are in the expectation that the new generation factories bring more competitiveness to the manufacturing companies through innovative approaches, methods and tools that support the factory planning process. The concept of "factory as a product" perceives the factory as a complex long life product introducing design advantages for factory planning and optimization, seeking to improve quality, reduce ramp-up, product delivery and overall reduce time and costs. In order to attain these objectives, there is an urgent need for a Virtual Factory Framework to structure the new generation factories.

The paper underlines the interest of using a performance management system applied to monitor the strategy effectiveness and the interoperation's performance in the collaborative networks (CN). The aim with this study is to verify if a performance management system helps decision-makers reach the alignment among participants in a collaborative network. It is expected that this work provides an adequate tool for supporting quick decisions to meet the feasible and desirable improvements in inter-organisational processes. A framework (CNPMS) is also presented, having been developed to support the dynamic performance management, which was applied in case studies of two Brazilian collaborative networks.

No abstract

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to study the alignment measurement in collaborative networks, using the fit concept and predictive performance measurement as its main enablers. A performance prediction approach is used in order to control a collaborative business network based not only in present and past performance measurements of each partner, but also taking into account the future behaviour of the intra-and inter-organisational processes performance. Design/methodology/approach-An exploratory case study was applied to a Brazilian collaborative network and mathematical approaches normally used in control theory were adopted to support alignment measurement. Findings-The use of predictive measurements to manage the alignment between the results of inter-organisational processes and performance targets set by the collaborative network. Research limitations/implications-This approach was applied in a specific supply chain network, based on three industrial companies. For other network typologies it will be necessary to evaluate the alignment that can be achieved. Practical implications-This predictive approach makes it possible to manage performance pro-actively using feedforward and feedback control. Therefore, tools that consider performance estimation are used based on a data fusion approach, with a proper combination of leading and lagging measurements, which make it possible to use forecasting methods and tools to achieve good predictions. Originality/value-The paper introduces an approach to alignment measurement leveraged by the new paradigm of performance prediction and presents an alignment metric for collaborative networks.

Nowadays, it has been observed an increasing awareness and understanding on the subject of sustainable companies and business models, addressing multidisciplinary approaches that cover not only economical problems, but also social and environmental challenges. In line with this trend, supply chains and especially Collaborative Networks managers are increasingly aware of these sustainability issues, continuously seeking to meet current human needs while preserving environmental safety. Only this way, focusing on its sustainable growing, it is possible to preserve companies' steadiness. In order to achieve this overall goal, present decision making related with sustainability policies and practices, becomes a critical issue for the future of each stakeholder in the network. Sustainability networks must ensure that each partner is fully aligned and committed with economic, environmental and social axes that rule the network operational behaviour. Nevertheless, in order to achieve this level of maturity within such complex and turbulent environments, organizations need to improve the quality of their performance assessment approaches, integrating the different sustainability perspectives. To accomplish this, it is critical to establish specific indicators responsible for materialize and evaluate partners' behaviour, according to wellidentified objectives, as well as fuse this information in a comprehensive and user-friendly way. In line with this concept, this paper presents a new approach, based on a fuzzy logic based algorithm, for sustainable networks performance and risk assessment.

Abstract. This paper aims to explore the performance alignment in collaborative network environments. It has been stated that performance management based on data collection and the evaluation of key performance indicators (KPIs) may not be effective due to the different indicators and measurement systems in place for the various participants in a collaborative network (CN). Therefore, measuring the strategic and inter-organizational alignment based on key alignment indicators (KAIs) can be an excellent alternative to improve performance evaluation systems. This approach has led to the exploration of the performance prediction paradigm and develops tools to estimate a performance and evaluate the degree of alignment by creating instances of a future performance in collaborative networks.

No abstract