VERA: Virtual enterprise reference architecture

Globalisation, outsourcing and customisation are main challenges of today not least for one-of-a-kind producers. A crucial competitive factor will be the ability rapidly to form customer focused virtual enterprises comprised of competencies from different partners by taking full advantage of ICT. To prepare for this is a complex task, in fact all business, management and planning views, and related subject areas and activities, may be involved. In order to deal with this complexity in a systematic way and secure global understanding GLOBEMEN has developed a Virtual Enterprise Reference Architecture based on GERAM. This paper describes its main contents and presents examples of its use and potentials.