Reference Model for Extended Enterprises. Application to the automotive sector

Abstract

[EN] In the past, manufacturing has been organised primarily on a local level, in towns and cities. With the development of transport facilities and logistic distribution-shipping nets, both the market and production have widened their scope of connection to suppliers and customers on a regional level, country and, eventually, continent. Over the last decades, manufacturers have "gone back to core businesses", which resulted in the outsourcing of all activities they no longer considered of strategic importance to their market position. However, value-adding activities have now also been outsourced since specialists, in most cases, manufacture better products at lower costs. Suppliers developed their core business and skills and have become specialists in designing and manufacturing theirs parts of the complete product. In those cases compound products can be manufactured only by a network of co-operating manufacturers. This network is able to deliver customised combinations of products and services, produced by its members, while concurrently being perceived as a single organisation by the customer. The Extended Enterprise (EE) is a term frequently used today in business literature to reflect the high level of interdependence that exist between organisations when they conduct business, not only in manufacturing industry, but also in others business areas.Inthiswork,anextendedenterprisereferencemodelisproposedtomodelandana lysetherelationshipsandflowsbetweenthedifferententerprisesthatcompoundanEE belonging to the automotive sector.