Interfaces between End-users in Agile and Virtual Enterprises

An Agile/Virtual enterprise (A/VE) is a dynamically reconfigurable global networked organization, sharing information and/or knowledge, skills, core competencies, market and other resources and processes, configured as a temporary alliance to meet a market window of opportunity, presenting as main characteristics agility, virtuality, distributivity and integrability. In order to achieve and manage VE dynamic reconfiguration, it is essential to minimize the VE reconfiguration time. One of the mechanisms to satisfy this requirement is by reducing the interaction/communication time between the virtual enterprise participants. This book is the result of a PhD dissertation which defends the hypothesis that the, Virtual Communication Architecture (VCA), being an environment for virtualization of the communication partners presentations, is capable of supporting VE reconfiguration dynamics, as well as the integration of new interlocutors in the A/VE model, more efficiently than the, traditional Direct Communication Architecture (DCA) concerning the reduction of the switching time between the interlocutors during dynamic reconfiguration of participants network.