Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) networks: Achievements and work-in-progress from three European projects

Virtual enterprise concepts have gained considerable relevance in the last years, giving rise to several interesting studies and industrial applications. While significant effort has been spent to demonstrate the benefits of the new production paradigm on large companies small-medium enterprises (SMEs) are still missing a proper approach to co-operative manufacturing. In this paper we report on the achievements and work-in-progress of three European Union projects addressing the problem of building the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure that will support this new paradigm. This paper concentrates on the process modelling and workflow management infrastructure aspects of the projects.