A collaborative decision support framework for managing the evolution of virtual enterprises

During the operation phase of a virtual enterprise (VE) different kinds of unexpected problems usually take place and they should be properly handled in order to keep the VE goals. However, the nature of a VE imposes new requirements as decisions should be taken in a distributed and decentralised manner due to members' autonomy and independence. Besides quality, agility in the decision-making is a must to guarantee success. For that, this paper presents a framework that provides a supporting methodology for guiding VE members along the diverse steps in the problem resolution, including assistance in their discussion. The framework relies on Business Process Management (BPM) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approaches, and the methodology on project management reference models (focused on changes management). A discussion about the problem is driven by a semi-automated protocol conducted by a Distributed Collaborative Decision Support System for the Management of VE Evolution (DSS-VE). The protocol delineates a sequence of steps to be taken but is flexible to cope with partners' heterogeneity and VE uniqueness. The impact of decisions can be evaluated via a distributed toolbox, containing a set of techniques for performance measurement and evaluation analysis.