Product Description: Industries and particularly the manufacturing sector have been facing difficult challenges in a context of socio-economic turbulence characterized by complexity as well as the speed of change in causal interconnections in the socio-economic environment...read more

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Product Description: Towards Balanced Automation The concept. Manufacturing industries worldwide are facing tough challenges as a consequence of the globalization of economy and the openness of the markets. Progress of the economic blocks such as the European Union, NAFTA, and MERCOSUR, and the global agreements such as GATT, in addition to their obvious economic and social consequences, provoke strong paradigm shifts in the way that the manufacturing systems are conceived and operate...read more

Product Description: Collaborative Network Organizations (CNO) corresponds to a very active and steadily growing area. For instance, Virtual enterprises/Virtual Organizations (PVC) suggest new ways of work and put the emphasis on collaborative networks of human actors...read more

The area of Virtual Organizations as a main component of the new discipline of Collaborative Networks has been the focus of research globally. The fast evolution of the information and communication technologies and in particular the so-called Internet technologies, also represents an important motivator for the emergence of new forms of collaboration. However, the research in many of these cases is highly fragmented, considering that each project is focused on solving specific problems. As such, there is no effective consolidation/harmonization among them in order to have an effective impact and facilitate the interaction among the involved experts. This book represents a contribution to the consolidation of the already vast amount of empirical knowledge and practical experience. A synthesis of results collected from the analysis of numerous projects and industry case studies is presented, with focus on: Principles and models, ICT infrastructures and tools, Implementation issues, and Case studies.

Product Description: Progress in collaborative networks continues showing a growing number of manifestations and has led to the acceptance of Collaborative Networks (CN) as a new scientific discipline.  Contributions to CN coming from multiple reference disciplines has been extensively investigated...read more

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Product Description: The development of Intelligent Manufacturing Systems represents a worldwide tendency. The areas of Multi-Agent Systems and Intelligent Mobile Agents offer a promising approach to such developments. Advances in electronic information exchange and multimedia have opened new opportunities for team work in networks of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), leading to the establishment of Virtual Enterprises...read more

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