Understanding and conceptualising the global manufacturing virtual network

Abstract

This paper seeks to gain a better understanding the practical and theoretical issues in collaborative manufacturing between companies in a value creation network. It proposes a conceptualisation for the global manufacturing virtual network (GMVN). It suggests that the GMVN-a new manufacturing architecture-has many distinguishing characteristics and is a promising example of the potential manufacturing configurations which could be based on a collaborative infrastructure and supporting ICT in order to address dramatic forthcoming changes in an increasingly fragmented market environment.