Added Value in Production Networks

Volltext: Corporate networks, production networks and, in particular, virtual or agile corporations, are forms of industrial value creation currently debated regarding efficiency and novelty. Though they have been known and used before, the novel aspect of networked organisations is their holistic view on value adding structures, i.e. that network-wide structures are regarded as an entirety and optimised accordingly. Through adaptable structures the corporate complexity is reduced and stable, disturbance-free processes made possible, not least by exploiting the possibilities of modern information infrastructure. The combination of individual company units in a case-oriented, dynamic configuration of a production network achieves a maximum degree of agility and allows to make use of considerable synergy effects. How the idea of a dynamic production network is put into practice, and how the total business process is optimised to benefit all partners, ist the focus of this article.