The eco-sustainability, with the multiple-agents interfacing, dynamic networks reconfigura- tion, and co-operative or conflicting operation features, naturally leads to experimental new entrepreneurship options. Concepts in virtual enterprises know widely-established interests, and offer effective support to expand the dimension of industrial organisations and to reach economic achievements through method innovation. As a basic rule, virtual corresponds to potentially real, meaning that sets of resources could be differently organised, however, always assuring the consistency with the inner and/or outer constraints, with on-going progress. If a given manufacturing flow is addressed, virtuality is somehow related to agility or to flex- ibility, and becomes a paramount attribute when externalities become critical conditions. It should be pointed out that virtuality does not oppose to reality (unless, perhaps, in “virtual reality”), as it simply deals with constraints consistency assuming that the state-equations
and/or the driving-actions could further specialise the actual behaviour. In such a process, the latent idea of optimality remains, when one refers to the “virtual-work principle” applied to conservative systems and/or connected variational approaches. Summing up, we would associate virtuality with two properties: dimension expansion, still keeping constraints consistency; and the ability of best choices steering.
These concepts justify the wide recourse to virtual organisations as the natural means sup- porting extended artefacts, and supplying the related functions of service engineering. Up to now, these issues represent options of advanced enterprises, basically, offered within voluntary agreement schemes. Of course, fair trade rules require assessing the actually-de- livered functions, according to legal metrology standards, by independent bodies; the wider, networked organisations, thereafter, happen to correspond to heterogeneous stockholders, whose binding reason is the supply chain and related services that grant the given functions and performance. The third party rule becomes central, when dealing with the eco-protection;
to such purpose, acknowledging the natural capital productivity (or, reciprocally, material resources consumption per unit delivered function) is non-eliminable duty (by TYPUS- metrics, or equivalent means), leading to a preliminary connection among the forward and backward branches of the supply chain, since the net recovery enters in the balance.
Now (and this will explicitly discussed in the next section of the chapter), to speed up the eco-sustainable behaviours, the EU lays down Directives, which aim: (first priority) at the prevention of waste; (in addition) at the reuse, recycling, and other forms of recovery of end-of-life products or components; and (as well) at improving the eco-performance of all economic operators, especially, the ones involved in end-of-life goods treatments. The enacted regulations are grounded on mandatory targets, with tight organisational precepts and full operation transparency (otherwise the process believableness disappears). For instance, in the case of end-of-life vehicles, the Member States are required to establish effective certifica- tion-of-destruction (CoD) procedures, linked to the local automotive registration system, and ruled by authorised treatment facilities (ATF) where the backward chain formally begins.
The achievement of the mandatory targets, however, from the technical point of view, is affected by downstream efficiency (reuse tracks, after-shredding and sorting processes, and so forth), and, from an economic/legal point of view, depends on the upstream carmakers’
responsibility. The whole requires adequate infrastructures, such as: for dismantlers’ quality;
for shedding capacity; for shredder residues treatments; and for process-data reliability. This means local/governmental involvement to promote the appropriate facilities and supporting means, and to establish the pertinent monitoring/controlling outfits. Most of the EU Member States are facing these issues with bureaucratic concern, rather than factual effectiveness, possibly because they are unaware of the potentialities of virtual organisations, in dealing the effective management of dynamic supply chains, joining efficiency and visibility.
The PMARRLelv environment (see Figure 3) is an example of a reference layout, positively established to introduce to acknowledge the buildup and the management of dynamic supply chains, providing visibility to ongoing processes and intermediate achievements.
Basically, it exploits interfacing layers, hierarchically above and under the operating mod- ules or agents; the information management is accomplished by brokers, hiding the client and/or the server, and addresses the (each time properly enabled) knowledge mask, which performs the transaction. This way, each agent or partner does not see the actual structure of each operation module; it only addresses its image, consistent with the chosen inner and/or outer constraints. The software is presently developed to deal with the end-of-life
vehicles case, both as investigation tools required by the local/governmental authorities to face mandatory targets already enacted by the European Commission, and to consider the voluntary agreements that the involved stakeholders could establish for better performance.
The implementation explores virtuality also, according to a more powerful track; the con- straints consistency provides the full set of potentially real setups, most suitably arranged into federated architectures. Then, the recourse to general knowledge-driven layouts gives reference criteria for resource optimisation.
All in all, the Web-based software that we are more generally addressing in the chapter, which deals with three-parties interfacing, might be quoted and described as a winning example of virtual enterprise. Indeed, lifelong servicing, with joint resources recovery at dismissal, cannot strictly be conceived, unless this option exists. Virtual enterprises, virtual organisations, extended enterprises, or dynamic cooperative networked concerns are more or less synonyms from the point of view of our study. These notions mean some or several dynamic partners that form themselves to a goal-oriented alliance according to needs and opportunities of the market, and remain operational as long as these opportunities persist (Camarinha-Matos et al., 2002). All members of such a cooperative effort keep certain independence; they exploit their individual features, and work together in harmony to ef- ficiently achieve their common goals, with highest economic benefits. From the network view, it can be taken into account as an agent-based community, too. Such setups might have several benefits comparing them with “traditional” big, networked, distributed but centrally-controlled enterprises, such as, for example:
• Agility: to faster recognize and react to any expected or unexpected changes in their environment, the ability to reorganise themselves if needed and, generally, a shorter time-to-market
• Complementarity: the creation of synergies, to better participate in competitive markets
• Achieving.dimension: to reach “critical mass” together with other “not big enough partners,” as SMEs
Figure 3. PMARRLelv-environment system concept
Operaton module
#n Operato
module
# Vsualbasc.net platform
management system
Relatonal data-base
& archval
Operato module
# Operaton module
#
Data resttuton and … reportng
Data handlng nterface
Web-based communcaton nterface
INPUT/OUTPUT
Operaton module
#n Operato
module
# Vsualbasc.net platform
management system
Relatonal data-base
& archval
Operato module
# Operaton module
#
Data resttuton and … reportng
Data handlng nterface
Web-based communcaton nterface
INPUT/OUTPUT
• Resource.optimisation: the possibility of optimal sharing of infrastructures, knowl- edge, and even risks
• Increased flexibility and reconfigurability: due to the principles of the set-up of such organisations; this flexibility may mean even the changing of some participating partners to others
The other hand, the “joint” management and operation of such voluntarily-organised co- operations mean several new legal aspects, which should be well defined in appropriate contracts. For example, confidential information management, access rights, and so forth, may be some such problems.
The.EU.Environmental.Compulsory.Policy
Eco-conservativeness becomes an imperative demand, once quality of life continuation is dealt with. This results in a series of accomplishments, with mainly two scopes, to:
• Expand.intangible.contributions.in.the.value.chain:.widely exploiting ICT means for wealth creation by value-added enhancements
• Lower. tangibles. consumption:.drastically compressing dumping and pollution impacts, through proper recovery/reuse/recycling targets
We address ambient intelligence as an opportunity to enrich the extended artefacts delivery, supported by extended enterprises, with concern for the manufacturers’ responsibility, to cover products life-cycle operation, notably, for environment impact and conformance-to- use monitoring. We ought to consider ambient intelligence as the enabling means to fulfil the basic monitoring and vaulting duties, already required by the EU environmental policy with the compulsory recovery/reuse/recycling targets, fixed for mass-product durables, for example, end-of-life vehicles (ELV), or waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).
The avoidance or, at least, the drastic reduction of polluting dumping appear to be the driv- ing input of such policy with, however, relevant direct effects on resource recovering, and on restructuring the supply chain by information-intensive deliveries.
On these grounds, the ambient intelligence tools acquire a quite special flavour, since they are invoked to face very demanding incumbents, with ready recourse to frameworks factually providing knowledge-driven entrepreneurship on the reverse logistics loop. This section of the chapter will organise to explore the:
• Manufacturers’.responsibility.principle:.as it surfaces from the EU directives, with due regards of the dismissal/dismantling/recovery requirements
• Information.frame: joined with the enacted recovery/reuse/recycling compulsory targets, as the basic instrument for process effectiveness assessment
• Operation.surroundings: leading to enhanced usability and reverse logistics achieve- ments, for suitable environment protection and eco-sustainability