Development of a Web-based enterprise collaborative platform for networked enterprises

As the manufacturing market is becoming more global and borderless with respect to national borders, a number of global manufacturing networks have been established, taking the advantage of fast-growing networking and information technologies. Networked enterprises consist of a number of firms that are geographically dispersed and do not belong to the same head company, a system with central management capability, possessing the ability of central task decomposition/allocation, co-ordination and monitoring. To ensure appropriate manufacturing operations are assigned to the appropriate firms, to the best interest of the “virtual” consortium, there is a need for the development of a collaborative platform which is capable of facilitating the efficient performance of resources and task allocations. In this paper, the development of a Web-based enterprise collaborative platform is presented. The applications of the platform on business process management for networked enterprises are also discussed.