The Innovative Plant - Highly Integrated and Virtual

Innovations are the pre-condition for the survival of enterprises in today's turbulent environment. But that's exactly where the problem is: the economic situation, as well as the high costs and risks linked with innovations represent a hurdle for enterprises, which they are less and less capable of surmounting. How to escape that vicious circle and how to approach enterprise securing actively? One answer is the virtual enterprise - the chronologically limited association of enterprises and their core competencies in order to develop a product together, place it on the market and distribute it. The essential advantages of these virtual enterprises are flexibility, as well as the force of impact through this association without the total costs and risks linked with the typical innovation efforts for the individual. These are, in contrast to a comparable solo-attempt, calculable and distributed. But the acting in virtual enterprises also appoints requirements upon the participating partn ers concerning innovation capability, process capability, as well as cooperation capability, particularly in regard to information- and communication infrastructures and technologies. Continuous and integrated innovation processes, as well as information technologies that support these are basic pre-conditions for acting in virtual structures. These pre-conditions, or requirements are far from being only a vision: trendsetting technologies, like client/server architecture and object orientation, as well a new concepts for organisation and process structures, in particular within the development process, such as Rapid Product Development for example, are ready waiting to lead enterprises from the crisis situation to active members of lucrative virtual structures.