Collaborative networked organizations - Concepts and practice in manufacturing enterprises

Participation in networks has nowadays become very important for any organization that strives to achieve a differentiated competitive advantage, especially if the company is small or medium sized. Collaboration is a key issue to rapidly answer market demands in a manufacturing company, through sharing competencies and resources. The collaborative networked organizations (CNO) area focuses on this type of organizational models that use ICT for supporting the development of collaborative business opportunities. This paper describes the key concepts related to CNOs, provides a high level classification of collaborative networks, and presents some application cases in the manufacturing industry. Finally a holistic research initiative addressing key challenges in the area is presented and a discussion of the CNO paradigm contribution to the challenges faced by manufacturing systems is made.