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APPROACHES FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF VIRTUAL ORGANIZATIONS; RESULTS FROM ECOLEAD
APPROACHES FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF VIRTUAL ORGANIZATIONS; RESULTS FROM ECOLEAD Martin Ollus, Kim Jansson, Iris Karvonen VTT, Enterprise Network Management Vuorimiehentie 5, Espoo P.O.Box 1000, FI-02044 VTT, Finland E-mails: [email protected], [email protected] , [email protected] Abstract: A Virtual Organization (VO) consists of independent organizations collaborating for a common goal. Proper management is needed in order to achieve the objectives. The VO management has to enforce collaboration between independent partners with their own internal aims and own internal processes and management means. The paper presents results and solutions to support the management of virtual organizations in a dynamic environment. Copyright© 2007 IFAC Keywords: Virtual organization, Collaboration, Decision support, Inheritance, Management systems, Networks, Performance monitoring, Supervisory control 1. INTRODUCTION The concept of Virtual Organizations is young (Camarinha-Matos, 2004). Virtual Organisations encompass a wide range of typologies in structure, topology, time span as well as life cycle phase coverage (Karvonen et al., 2005). In specific categories of VOs the behaviour is understood and supported by dedicated methods and tools (e.g. supply chains and extended enterprises), but the “Management” of their activities in terms of fostering the coordinated target achievement is still in its beginnings, and the management of generic VOs is less systematically studied and constitutes a major challenge. In this paper, the VO Management is considered as the management of business processes going over and across the VO members. It does not cover the management of the constituent members themselves (Negretto, 2006). It describes the conceptual approach used in the ECOLEAD project within the European 6th framework programme (http://www.ecolead.org) and the solutions, which have been developed to support the management of virtual organizations in a dynamic environment. The VO Management is defined to contain "the organisation, allocation and co-ordination of resources and their activities as well as their interorganisational dependencies to achieve the objectives of the VO within the required time, cost and quality frame" (Eschenbaecher, Jansson, 2005, Ollus et al., 2007). VO Management can be seen as the control of the VO life-cycle, that is, as a support function
interacting with the VO operational or customer service processes. So far, there has been little support for the management of dynamic virtual organizations. Proposed models, methods and tools mainly support networked organizations with fairly stable processes. Mainly, the concepts are based on linking some additional processes to available intra-organizational methods and tools (Eschenbaecher, Jansson, 2005). In a study, no single concept for Virtual Organizations in general was found, nor could it be developed out of the analyzed methodologies, scenarios and cases (Karvonen et al., 2005). For analyzing the VO management, VOs have been structured in categories, topologies and contingency factors (Katzy et al., 2004, 2005). Although no single model for VOM could be derived, the identified groupings support the creation of common management support templates. In the ECOLEAD project, a real-time, performance measurement based VO management is developed. This approach supports the VO manager to be continuously aware of the status of the VO. In addition, it actively alerts the manager about possible anomalies and emerging problems via simulation based alerting. Similar techniques are also used for supporting decision making via scenario analyses and evaluation of possible management actions. The basic solutions and support functions for the support for the VO manager, which have been developed in the ECOLEAD project, are described in this paper.
The VO is generally created and operated for specific tasks. After the fulfilment of its mission, the VO is disclosed. However, important knowledge and experience may be created during the operation of the VO. To enable further virtual organizations to benefit from these lessons learned, a so called inheritance feature is included in the approaches developed. In connection with the disclosure of the VO, all relevant knowledge related to its operation is inherited to the longer lasting entity, the virtual breeding environment (VBE).
deviations in relation to the expected or wanted behaviour of the VO.
2. VO MANAGEMENT
To support the described activities, five different functions are realized (Pěchouček, Hodík, 2007): • VO model (VOM) • Supported Indicator Definition and set up (SID) • Distributed Indicator Information Integrator (D3I) • Monitoring and alert dispatcher (MAF) • Decision Support System (DSS) The realization is illustrated in Figure 2.
In the concepts of ECOLEAD, the Virtual Organization is created within the VBE. In this phase the configuration and the main tasks of the VO are defined. The operational management of the VO is a task for the VO management (team), which has the responsibility for the fulfilment of the objectives of the VO. The VO management is illustrated in Figure 1.
Monitor VO Manager
For evaluation of possible interventions and management actions, the VO manager has access to a decision support system, where the impact of different scenarios can be analyzed. Based on the outcome, he or she can decide about the implementation of possible management actions, which largely consists of communication and negotiations with the VO members.
For management purposes, a model of the virtual organization is needed. The same model is the basis
Dashboard & Alert System
Decisions Support
Now Impact of Problems & Deviations
Past VO Performance
What-if Scenarios
Expected VO Performance Communicate, Negotiate & Implement Decisions Fig. 1: Overview of the VO management and related support functions
The VO manager monitors the performance of the virtual organization supported by a dashboard. Relevant information and knowledge about the performance until the present state is available. In addition, an alert system is in place to indicate anomalies, also emerging ones. Via the dashboard the VO manager can evaluate the impact of identified
for the definition and set-up of the performance measurement and for the definition of the key performance indicators (KPI). During the operation of the VO, the performance measurements from the distributed organizations in the VO are collected in a variety of forms by the measurement collection (D3I), which also aggregates measurement as defined by the SID module.
The MAF module provides monitoring and alerting functions to the VO manager, who can use especially
• Option to restrict data provision to the data that is relevant for the VO and prevent access to confidential data
Fig. 2: The realization of the VO management the simulation features in the DSS system to evaluate possible management actions. 3. PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT Correct, up-to-date information about the VO performance is the basis for management. A software prototype for the Virtual Organisation Performance Measurement (VOPM) has been developed. It consists of the two pillars (modules) SID and DI3 introduced in the previous section. In the realization of the performance measurement, the main requirements and challenges are (Westphal, 2006, Ollus et al., 2007): • Reduction of effort to set-up and operate VOPM • Support for the selection and configuration of appropriate indicators for a particular VO • Option to make use of existing Performance Measurement approaches available at the VO members • Flexibility to gather data from very different data sources at the distributed partners • Support for “real-time” VOPM but flexibility to adapt measurement frequency and data provision to the needs respectively the abilities of the VO members
• Enabling unambiguous definition of indicators and application of defined standard indicators. In the development of the VOPM toolkit, the following design principles have been in place:
• Flexibility and adaptability for gathering data from the VO members. • Decentralised and distributed measurement. The collaborative processes are distributed among the VO members, so also the corresponding measurement components. • Autonomous behaviour of the decentralised components. The components operate in a local domain work autonomously according to defined tasks and rules allowing internal pre-processing. • Inclusion of “learning” features for the components enabling utilization of experience and adaptation to states of the processes. • Interoperability and integration into the VOManagement environment and the ECOLEAD ICT-I. As indicated in the previous section, the performance measurement consists of two interrelated activities. The SID supports the definition and configuration of
appropriate indicators for a particular VO and the DI3 gathers the data for Performance Indicators in a heterogeneous distributed environment.
• A Data Adapter handling communication with existing systems in local domains. • A Controller, enabling a proper configuration at each different partner location.
SID Catalogue of pr-defined Indicators pre-defined indicators and metrics
VO Manager
Indicator Management (configuration and activation)
VO-Mod
Impact Analyser
Configured indicators and metrics for specific VO
(cause and effect)
Measurement Schedule Generator
DI3
Fig. 3: Overview of the performance indicator definition system.
The Supported Indicator Definition (SID) tool is designed to support VOs in the selection, configuration and activation of Performance Indicators. As described in Figure 3, its main blocks are: • Catalogue of pre-defined Indicators. • Indicator Management. • Impact Analyser. • Measurement Schedule Generator. • Communication with the other modules. The real-time measurement system D3I fetches the actual data as defined by the SID. Using the concept of Service Orientation, the system can be configured to provide different types of information. Values can be fetched automatically from ERP systems, databases, etc. Also manual information collection is possible, e.g. by means of emails or input on a web page. The main benefit is the measurement of information from multiple isolated domains, which have local control of the outgoing flow of information, allowing the manager to track information located at multiple locations in different infrastructures. The DI3 consists of mainly three components, as also shown in Figure 4: • An Information Service responsible for the measurements.
DI3 Controller application
VO Manager
SID Measurement schedule generator
VO Partner
MAF Information service
Data Adapter
Indicator value database
Internal system
Fig. 4: Overview of the measurement collection system. Various types of rules can be distinguished for the collection of measurement indicators: • Measurement rules, governing the measurements • Provision rules, governing the distribution of measurement information • Calculation rules, describing aggregation of measurement information. • Validity rules, describing time-variant validation. Examples of provision rules for the timing of measurements: • As soon as the indicator can be calculated
• As soon as there is a change in the value of the indicator. • According to a defined frequency. • On defined dates. • As soon as a new/additional value for the metric is available. Also other provisions than the timing of measurements can be defined by the VO manager. 4. MODELLING FOR VO MANAGEMENT The basis for the management activities consists of the processes to be managed and their models. A modelling environment is used to ensure flexibility and a powerful user interface for the VO manager. The infrastructure is built on two pillars giving flexibility to the users of the modelling (Pondrelli, 2006, Pěchouček, Hodík, 2007): • A conceptual meta-model collecting basic VO concept. • A complete web service (WS) interface for managing the models instantiated over the metamodel. Multiple implementation of the same WS interface is possible. Each single VBE can use different modelling environments or tools and approaches to provide specific user interfaces and business logics to the WS interface.
The main user of the modelling environment is the VO manager. He is supported by a web based tool called VO-Mod Wizard, which provides to the VO manager a single entry point for tracking the entire VO lifecycle. Via this tool the VO manager can instantiate new VO models following simple steps. The basic VO information can be imported from external sources, like the VBE and the contract defining the objectives and tasks for the VO. It also provides a set of basic services for managing the entire lifecycle of each single VO. An example of the user interface to the wizard is shown in Figure 6. The wizard can also be used as a single access point for managing the different aspects of the VO during the operational phase (monitoring, performance measurement, exception handling, simulation, etc.). 5. MONITORING SERVICES The centre for managing the VO is the web dashboard, which supports the VO manager in monitoring and managing the VO (Pondrelli, 2006, Pěchouček, Hodík, 2007). It gives an easy view on the general situation, as can be seen from Figure 6. By using the dashboard, the VO manager and other actors can go deeper into the tool and access information about possible anomalies and their causes. Also consequences can be evaluated by using the decision support features.
Fig. 5: VO-Mod Wizard for the phase of assigning activities in the VO.
The dashboard is based on the MAF module. Its features form a complete platform supporting the VO manager in his monitoring and managing of the VO. The MAF provides features for: • Storage of VO actual data. • VO model update. • VO monitoring. • Alerting about exceptions. Consequently, it provides a complete and extendable set of Web services able to manage the storage of the VO actual data. The stored information is also used for updates of the VO model.
define alert rules procedures for delivering alert messages to the VO partners. The alert dispatcher provides the following functional services (Pěchouček, Hodík, 2007): • Alert rules generator: The VO manager can define, supported by a web interface, alerting rules. The tool is integrated with the VO model environment. It automatically produces sets of rules, based on the relationships defined in the model. E.g. a particular task of the WBS can be related to organizations and human resources. In such cases, the system creates rules for alerting involved people in cases of exceptions related to tasks assigned to them.
Fig. 6: Example of the dashboard user interface.
The MAF Server takes care of updating the VO Model according to the actual situation of the VO partners. It schedules VO model updates and uses the Web services provided by the VO-Mod to modify parameters inside the model. Parameters related to the actual situation of the VO, like the activity status of the work brake down structure (WBS) or the situation of the budget, are aligned to the real state of the VO members. The revised status changes the KPI values included into the model using the business logic stored into the model itself.
• Alert message dispatcher: This subcomponent takes care of the real message delivery process. It is built using a plug-in structure which allows the creation of different message types (e-mail, sms, SOAP, etc.). • Alert message manager: The tool provides a web interface for accessing all the messages sent during the whole operational phase of a VO. The functionality helps the VO manager in having an actual overview over the history of exceptions. • Exception prevention system: Using the VO model, the service continuously analyzes the actual situation in order to discover possible inconsistencies.
The monitoring functionality is provided via the web dashboard. It is a web based tool capable of visualizing appropriate actual information about the VO. The VO manager can get actual information about all the aspects of the VO, while the VO partners can access their own personalized, specific data. The web dashboard retrieves the actualized information directly from the VO model that can be considered the centre point containing all the knowledge about the VO.
The developed tools allow the VO manager to be alerted when an exception is raised. Alerts are forward to the involved partners, helping to proactively manage the performance of the VO.
The VO manager is automatically alerted by the system, if an exception has occurred. Supported by the MAF-Alert dispatcher, the VO manager can
Decision Support System (DSS) helps the manager to evaluate the status of the VO and to decide about possible actions. The main approach is agent based simulation. The tasks of DSS are what-if analysis,
6. DECISION SUPPORT IN VO MANAGEMENT
(re)scheduling and (re)configuration. To provide its services, DSS gains initial VO configuration and upto-date state of the VO from the VOMod component
Inside the DSS, existing and potential VO members are represented by agents. The agent is created at the moment when VO manager decides to include the
Fig. 7: Example of the presentation of DSS results. via VOMod web service interfaces. The alternative schedules and their analyses, the outcomes from the DSS, are provided to VO manager. Simulation is one of the core functionalities of the workflow management systems (Yuhong et al., 2001). It allows “what-if-analysis”, verifying and comparing the impact of various actions, discovering possible bottlenecks, and pre-preparing potential adaptations of VO configuration and schedule. The developed DSS provides the users with basic functionalities that allow (Hodík, 2006, Pěchouček, Hodík, 2007): • Configuration of the simulator according to actual state of the VO as initial state for the simulation. • Manual editing the VO configuration and evaluation of the impacts. • Semi-automated adaptation of the VO schedule (user denotes the influenced milestones and the system finalizes adaptation of the simulated schedule). • Automated (on user’s request) scheduling of nonscheduled tasks and their fragments. • Semi-automated re-scheduling (user denotes fragments of schedule that have to be rescheduled) • Analysis of difference of original and adapted schedule. In the Figure 7, the results of an analysis of task dependencies in the workflow of VO members are shown for a case in the ECOLEAD project.
partner to the VO or when he or she decides to include the partner to the re-scheduling process or what-if analysis. Only VBE members contributing to the VO are included in the calculations. If new VO members need to be included, it is done on-line. The basic profile of a new partner is provided by the VBE. This information is completed by the VO manager. 7. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE CHALLENGES The main challenges in the management of Virtual Organizations come from the temporary nature of a VO and the distribution of operations to several independent organizations, which is expected to collaborate towards a common goal. In addition, the VO is aimed to respond to fast changes in its environment, i.e. a dynamic management is needed, which also may include restructuring of the management approach, or even the VO configuration, during the operation of the VO (Ollus, 2005). To cope with these, partly contradictory, features, a real-time performance measurement based VO management approach has been developed. Its main features have been realized in prototypes. This paper describes the main features of the solutions. Three regional industrial SME networks in three different European countries are presently testing and evaluating the functionality and usability of the solutions. The efficiency of virtual organisations depends heavily on the performance of the partners and their collaboration. This performance may, in addition to the task, depend on the configuration of the VO. The relationship between partners’ performance and task
fulfilment is not easy to model, nor are there obvious measurements available. Some of the measurements are also qualitative and sometimes even subjective. In addition, they may contain sensitive and confidential aspects. One major challenge for the management of Virtual Organizations is to create a measurement approach for collection of intangible, qualitative features of virtual organizations and their partners. Interesting features to understand and measure are: • Collaboration performance • Collaboration spirit • Motivation • Communication and communication ability From the management point of view, the impact of intangible features on the tangible outcomes of the virtual organization, e.g. time, cost and quality, is also an important issue. There are still needs to create models for describing these relationships. A third challenge is related to the management means for impact on these qualitative features by the VO manager. To meet the mentioned challenges, a broad multidisciplinary approach is required. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work was supported in part by the ECOLEAD project funded by the European Commission. The authors also acknowledge the commitment and the contributions from the ECOLEAD partners, who have participated in the work on the VO management. REFERENCES Camarinha-Matos, L. M.; Banahan, E.; Sousa, J. P (2004). Emerging Collaborative Forms. In Camarinha-Matos, L. M.; Afsarmanesh, H.; Collaborative Networked Organizations – A research agenda for emerging business models. 1st Edition. KAP. ISBN 1-4020-7823-4. 2004. p. 41-64. Eschenbaecher J, Jansson K. (2005). Challenges in Virtual Organisations Management: Report on methods for distributed business process management. ECOLEAD deliverable D32.1. www.ecolead.org. Hodík J. (ed) (2006). Decision Support System (DSS) ECOLEAD, Deliverable D34.3 Karvonen, I., Salkari, I., Ollus, M. (2005). Characterizing Virtual Organization and Their Management. In the proceedings of PRO-VE 2005 conference - Collaborative Networks and their Breeding Environments (CamarinhaMatos, L., Afsarmanesh, H., Ortiz A.-editors). Springer. Katzy, B. R.; Loeh, H. L.; Zhang, C. (2004). Virtual Organizing Scenarios. In Camarinha-Matos, L. M.; Afsarmanesh, H. Collaborative Networked Organizations. 1st Edition. KAP. ISBN 1-40207823-4. 2004. p. 27-40. Katzy, B., Zhang, C. & Löh, H. (2005). Reference models for Virtual organisations. In CamarinhaMatos, L., Afsarmanesh, H., Ollus, M. (eds.),
Virtual organizations. Systems and Practices, Springer-Verlag. 2005; 45-58. Negretto U. (ed) (2006). Report on Methodologies, Processes and Services for VO Management. ECOLEAD, Deliverable D32.2. www.ecoleasd.org. Ollus M (2005). A Holistic Approach towards Collaborative Networked Organizations. In Cunningham P, Cunningham M (Ed). Innovation and the Knowledge Economy - Issues, Applications, Case Studies. ISBN 1-58603-563-0. IOS Press. Amsterdam. Ollus M, Jansson K, Karvonen I. (2007). On the management of collaborative SME networks. In the proceedings of COA’07 – 8th IFAC Symposium on Cost-Oriented Automation, Habana, Cuba. Pěchouček M., Hodík J. (ed) (2007). Virtual Organisation Management eServices. ECOLEAD, Deliverable D34.5. Pondrelli L. (ed) (2006). VO Management (VOM) 2nd prototype ECOLEAD, Deliverable D34.2. Westphal I. (ed) (2006). VO Performance Measurement (VOPM). ECOLEAD, Deliverable D34.1. Yuhong Y., Zakaria M., and Weiming S. (2001). Integration of Workflow and Agent Technology for Business Process Management. In Proceedings of The Sixth International Conference on CSCW in Design. London, Ontario, Canada, pp. 420-426, ISBN: 0-66018493-1.
interacting with the VO operational or customer service processes. So far, there has been little support for the management of dynamic virtual organizations. Proposed models, methods and tools mainly support networked organizations with fairly stable processes. Mainly, the concepts are based on linking some additional processes to available intra-organizational methods and tools (Eschenbaecher, Jansson, 2005). In a study, no single concept for Virtual Organizations in general was found, nor could it be developed out of the analyzed methodologies, scenarios and cases (Karvonen et al., 2005). For analyzing the VO management, VOs have been structured in categories, topologies and contingency factors (Katzy et al., 2004, 2005). Although no single model for VOM could be derived, the identified groupings support the creation of common management support templates. In the ECOLEAD project, a real-time, performance measurement based VO management is developed. This approach supports the VO manager to be continuously aware of the status of the VO. In addition, it actively alerts the manager about possible anomalies and emerging problems via simulation based alerting. Similar techniques are also used for supporting decision making via scenario analyses and evaluation of possible management actions. The basic solutions and support functions for the support for the VO manager, which have been developed in the ECOLEAD project, are described in this paper.
The VO is generally created and operated for specific tasks. After the fulfilment of its mission, the VO is disclosed. However, important knowledge and experience may be created during the operation of the VO. To enable further virtual organizations to benefit from these lessons learned, a so called inheritance feature is included in the approaches developed. In connection with the disclosure of the VO, all relevant knowledge related to its operation is inherited to the longer lasting entity, the virtual breeding environment (VBE).
deviations in relation to the expected or wanted behaviour of the VO.
2. VO MANAGEMENT
To support the described activities, five different functions are realized (Pěchouček, Hodík, 2007): • VO model (VOM) • Supported Indicator Definition and set up (SID) • Distributed Indicator Information Integrator (D3I) • Monitoring and alert dispatcher (MAF) • Decision Support System (DSS) The realization is illustrated in Figure 2.
In the concepts of ECOLEAD, the Virtual Organization is created within the VBE. In this phase the configuration and the main tasks of the VO are defined. The operational management of the VO is a task for the VO management (team), which has the responsibility for the fulfilment of the objectives of the VO. The VO management is illustrated in Figure 1.
Monitor VO Manager
For evaluation of possible interventions and management actions, the VO manager has access to a decision support system, where the impact of different scenarios can be analyzed. Based on the outcome, he or she can decide about the implementation of possible management actions, which largely consists of communication and negotiations with the VO members.
For management purposes, a model of the virtual organization is needed. The same model is the basis
Dashboard & Alert System
Decisions Support
Now Impact of Problems & Deviations
Past VO Performance
What-if Scenarios
Expected VO Performance Communicate, Negotiate & Implement Decisions Fig. 1: Overview of the VO management and related support functions
The VO manager monitors the performance of the virtual organization supported by a dashboard. Relevant information and knowledge about the performance until the present state is available. In addition, an alert system is in place to indicate anomalies, also emerging ones. Via the dashboard the VO manager can evaluate the impact of identified
for the definition and set-up of the performance measurement and for the definition of the key performance indicators (KPI). During the operation of the VO, the performance measurements from the distributed organizations in the VO are collected in a variety of forms by the measurement collection (D3I), which also aggregates measurement as defined by the SID module.
The MAF module provides monitoring and alerting functions to the VO manager, who can use especially
• Option to restrict data provision to the data that is relevant for the VO and prevent access to confidential data
Fig. 2: The realization of the VO management the simulation features in the DSS system to evaluate possible management actions. 3. PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT Correct, up-to-date information about the VO performance is the basis for management. A software prototype for the Virtual Organisation Performance Measurement (VOPM) has been developed. It consists of the two pillars (modules) SID and DI3 introduced in the previous section. In the realization of the performance measurement, the main requirements and challenges are (Westphal, 2006, Ollus et al., 2007): • Reduction of effort to set-up and operate VOPM • Support for the selection and configuration of appropriate indicators for a particular VO • Option to make use of existing Performance Measurement approaches available at the VO members • Flexibility to gather data from very different data sources at the distributed partners • Support for “real-time” VOPM but flexibility to adapt measurement frequency and data provision to the needs respectively the abilities of the VO members
• Enabling unambiguous definition of indicators and application of defined standard indicators. In the development of the VOPM toolkit, the following design principles have been in place:
• Flexibility and adaptability for gathering data from the VO members. • Decentralised and distributed measurement. The collaborative processes are distributed among the VO members, so also the corresponding measurement components. • Autonomous behaviour of the decentralised components. The components operate in a local domain work autonomously according to defined tasks and rules allowing internal pre-processing. • Inclusion of “learning” features for the components enabling utilization of experience and adaptation to states of the processes. • Interoperability and integration into the VOManagement environment and the ECOLEAD ICT-I. As indicated in the previous section, the performance measurement consists of two interrelated activities. The SID supports the definition and configuration of
appropriate indicators for a particular VO and the DI3 gathers the data for Performance Indicators in a heterogeneous distributed environment.
• A Data Adapter handling communication with existing systems in local domains. • A Controller, enabling a proper configuration at each different partner location.
SID Catalogue of pr-defined Indicators pre-defined indicators and metrics
VO Manager
Indicator Management (configuration and activation)
VO-Mod
Impact Analyser
Configured indicators and metrics for specific VO
(cause and effect)
Measurement Schedule Generator
DI3
Fig. 3: Overview of the performance indicator definition system.
The Supported Indicator Definition (SID) tool is designed to support VOs in the selection, configuration and activation of Performance Indicators. As described in Figure 3, its main blocks are: • Catalogue of pre-defined Indicators. • Indicator Management. • Impact Analyser. • Measurement Schedule Generator. • Communication with the other modules. The real-time measurement system D3I fetches the actual data as defined by the SID. Using the concept of Service Orientation, the system can be configured to provide different types of information. Values can be fetched automatically from ERP systems, databases, etc. Also manual information collection is possible, e.g. by means of emails or input on a web page. The main benefit is the measurement of information from multiple isolated domains, which have local control of the outgoing flow of information, allowing the manager to track information located at multiple locations in different infrastructures. The DI3 consists of mainly three components, as also shown in Figure 4: • An Information Service responsible for the measurements.
DI3 Controller application
VO Manager
SID Measurement schedule generator
VO Partner
MAF Information service
Data Adapter
Indicator value database
Internal system
Fig. 4: Overview of the measurement collection system. Various types of rules can be distinguished for the collection of measurement indicators: • Measurement rules, governing the measurements • Provision rules, governing the distribution of measurement information • Calculation rules, describing aggregation of measurement information. • Validity rules, describing time-variant validation. Examples of provision rules for the timing of measurements: • As soon as the indicator can be calculated
• As soon as there is a change in the value of the indicator. • According to a defined frequency. • On defined dates. • As soon as a new/additional value for the metric is available. Also other provisions than the timing of measurements can be defined by the VO manager. 4. MODELLING FOR VO MANAGEMENT The basis for the management activities consists of the processes to be managed and their models. A modelling environment is used to ensure flexibility and a powerful user interface for the VO manager. The infrastructure is built on two pillars giving flexibility to the users of the modelling (Pondrelli, 2006, Pěchouček, Hodík, 2007): • A conceptual meta-model collecting basic VO concept. • A complete web service (WS) interface for managing the models instantiated over the metamodel. Multiple implementation of the same WS interface is possible. Each single VBE can use different modelling environments or tools and approaches to provide specific user interfaces and business logics to the WS interface.
The main user of the modelling environment is the VO manager. He is supported by a web based tool called VO-Mod Wizard, which provides to the VO manager a single entry point for tracking the entire VO lifecycle. Via this tool the VO manager can instantiate new VO models following simple steps. The basic VO information can be imported from external sources, like the VBE and the contract defining the objectives and tasks for the VO. It also provides a set of basic services for managing the entire lifecycle of each single VO. An example of the user interface to the wizard is shown in Figure 6. The wizard can also be used as a single access point for managing the different aspects of the VO during the operational phase (monitoring, performance measurement, exception handling, simulation, etc.). 5. MONITORING SERVICES The centre for managing the VO is the web dashboard, which supports the VO manager in monitoring and managing the VO (Pondrelli, 2006, Pěchouček, Hodík, 2007). It gives an easy view on the general situation, as can be seen from Figure 6. By using the dashboard, the VO manager and other actors can go deeper into the tool and access information about possible anomalies and their causes. Also consequences can be evaluated by using the decision support features.
Fig. 5: VO-Mod Wizard for the phase of assigning activities in the VO.
The dashboard is based on the MAF module. Its features form a complete platform supporting the VO manager in his monitoring and managing of the VO. The MAF provides features for: • Storage of VO actual data. • VO model update. • VO monitoring. • Alerting about exceptions. Consequently, it provides a complete and extendable set of Web services able to manage the storage of the VO actual data. The stored information is also used for updates of the VO model.
define alert rules procedures for delivering alert messages to the VO partners. The alert dispatcher provides the following functional services (Pěchouček, Hodík, 2007): • Alert rules generator: The VO manager can define, supported by a web interface, alerting rules. The tool is integrated with the VO model environment. It automatically produces sets of rules, based on the relationships defined in the model. E.g. a particular task of the WBS can be related to organizations and human resources. In such cases, the system creates rules for alerting involved people in cases of exceptions related to tasks assigned to them.
Fig. 6: Example of the dashboard user interface.
The MAF Server takes care of updating the VO Model according to the actual situation of the VO partners. It schedules VO model updates and uses the Web services provided by the VO-Mod to modify parameters inside the model. Parameters related to the actual situation of the VO, like the activity status of the work brake down structure (WBS) or the situation of the budget, are aligned to the real state of the VO members. The revised status changes the KPI values included into the model using the business logic stored into the model itself.
• Alert message dispatcher: This subcomponent takes care of the real message delivery process. It is built using a plug-in structure which allows the creation of different message types (e-mail, sms, SOAP, etc.). • Alert message manager: The tool provides a web interface for accessing all the messages sent during the whole operational phase of a VO. The functionality helps the VO manager in having an actual overview over the history of exceptions. • Exception prevention system: Using the VO model, the service continuously analyzes the actual situation in order to discover possible inconsistencies.
The monitoring functionality is provided via the web dashboard. It is a web based tool capable of visualizing appropriate actual information about the VO. The VO manager can get actual information about all the aspects of the VO, while the VO partners can access their own personalized, specific data. The web dashboard retrieves the actualized information directly from the VO model that can be considered the centre point containing all the knowledge about the VO.
The developed tools allow the VO manager to be alerted when an exception is raised. Alerts are forward to the involved partners, helping to proactively manage the performance of the VO.
The VO manager is automatically alerted by the system, if an exception has occurred. Supported by the MAF-Alert dispatcher, the VO manager can
Decision Support System (DSS) helps the manager to evaluate the status of the VO and to decide about possible actions. The main approach is agent based simulation. The tasks of DSS are what-if analysis,
6. DECISION SUPPORT IN VO MANAGEMENT
(re)scheduling and (re)configuration. To provide its services, DSS gains initial VO configuration and upto-date state of the VO from the VOMod component
Inside the DSS, existing and potential VO members are represented by agents. The agent is created at the moment when VO manager decides to include the
Fig. 7: Example of the presentation of DSS results. via VOMod web service interfaces. The alternative schedules and their analyses, the outcomes from the DSS, are provided to VO manager. Simulation is one of the core functionalities of the workflow management systems (Yuhong et al., 2001). It allows “what-if-analysis”, verifying and comparing the impact of various actions, discovering possible bottlenecks, and pre-preparing potential adaptations of VO configuration and schedule. The developed DSS provides the users with basic functionalities that allow (Hodík, 2006, Pěchouček, Hodík, 2007): • Configuration of the simulator according to actual state of the VO as initial state for the simulation. • Manual editing the VO configuration and evaluation of the impacts. • Semi-automated adaptation of the VO schedule (user denotes the influenced milestones and the system finalizes adaptation of the simulated schedule). • Automated (on user’s request) scheduling of nonscheduled tasks and their fragments. • Semi-automated re-scheduling (user denotes fragments of schedule that have to be rescheduled) • Analysis of difference of original and adapted schedule. In the Figure 7, the results of an analysis of task dependencies in the workflow of VO members are shown for a case in the ECOLEAD project.
partner to the VO or when he or she decides to include the partner to the re-scheduling process or what-if analysis. Only VBE members contributing to the VO are included in the calculations. If new VO members need to be included, it is done on-line. The basic profile of a new partner is provided by the VBE. This information is completed by the VO manager. 7. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE CHALLENGES The main challenges in the management of Virtual Organizations come from the temporary nature of a VO and the distribution of operations to several independent organizations, which is expected to collaborate towards a common goal. In addition, the VO is aimed to respond to fast changes in its environment, i.e. a dynamic management is needed, which also may include restructuring of the management approach, or even the VO configuration, during the operation of the VO (Ollus, 2005). To cope with these, partly contradictory, features, a real-time performance measurement based VO management approach has been developed. Its main features have been realized in prototypes. This paper describes the main features of the solutions. Three regional industrial SME networks in three different European countries are presently testing and evaluating the functionality and usability of the solutions. The efficiency of virtual organisations depends heavily on the performance of the partners and their collaboration. This performance may, in addition to the task, depend on the configuration of the VO. The relationship between partners’ performance and task
fulfilment is not easy to model, nor are there obvious measurements available. Some of the measurements are also qualitative and sometimes even subjective. In addition, they may contain sensitive and confidential aspects. One major challenge for the management of Virtual Organizations is to create a measurement approach for collection of intangible, qualitative features of virtual organizations and their partners. Interesting features to understand and measure are: • Collaboration performance • Collaboration spirit • Motivation • Communication and communication ability From the management point of view, the impact of intangible features on the tangible outcomes of the virtual organization, e.g. time, cost and quality, is also an important issue. There are still needs to create models for describing these relationships. A third challenge is related to the management means for impact on these qualitative features by the VO manager. To meet the mentioned challenges, a broad multidisciplinary approach is required. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work was supported in part by the ECOLEAD project funded by the European Commission. The authors also acknowledge the commitment and the contributions from the ECOLEAD partners, who have participated in the work on the VO management. REFERENCES Camarinha-Matos, L. M.; Banahan, E.; Sousa, J. P (2004). Emerging Collaborative Forms. In Camarinha-Matos, L. M.; Afsarmanesh, H.; Collaborative Networked Organizations – A research agenda for emerging business models. 1st Edition. KAP. ISBN 1-4020-7823-4. 2004. p. 41-64. Eschenbaecher J, Jansson K. (2005). Challenges in Virtual Organisations Management: Report on methods for distributed business process management. ECOLEAD deliverable D32.1. www.ecolead.org. Hodík J. (ed) (2006). Decision Support System (DSS) ECOLEAD, Deliverable D34.3 Karvonen, I., Salkari, I., Ollus, M. (2005). Characterizing Virtual Organization and Their Management. In the proceedings of PRO-VE 2005 conference - Collaborative Networks and their Breeding Environments (CamarinhaMatos, L., Afsarmanesh, H., Ortiz A.-editors). Springer. Katzy, B. R.; Loeh, H. L.; Zhang, C. (2004). Virtual Organizing Scenarios. In Camarinha-Matos, L. M.; Afsarmanesh, H. Collaborative Networked Organizations. 1st Edition. KAP. ISBN 1-40207823-4. 2004. p. 27-40. Katzy, B., Zhang, C. & Löh, H. (2005). Reference models for Virtual organisations. In CamarinhaMatos, L., Afsarmanesh, H., Ollus, M. (eds.),
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