Autor: Jens Eschenbächer

Electric mobility is currently subject to intensive discussions. New business models, products and services, as well as innovation concepts are developed by R&D and tested in real-life. In this context, the project “Personal Mobility Center” has been carried out in the Bremen/Oldenburg model region for electric mobility. On the basis of the Product Life-Cycle, first approaches for product-related services in the different phases of electric mobility have been worked out. Analysis of these “Extended Products” has shown that battery electric vehicles have to overcome several challenges before new mobility offers based on them can compete on the market.

The continuing change of producer markets towards buyer markets has a strong impact on the competition between manufacturing enterprises. As a strategic answer collaborative networks such as virtual corporations, virtual enterprises or virtual factories have been discussed since the beginning of the 90ies of last century. Many models and concepts supporting the life cycle of such organisations - consisting of the creation, operation and dissolution phases - have been presented. An important aspect in the creation phase is strategic planning. This phase is supported by concepts of long-term networks like industrial clusters or regional networks which act as a virtual breeding environment and which enable the short-term creation of virtual organisations. Especially this phase needs support of strategic planning which can be seen as a part of the strategic management process. This paper shows that such virtual breeding environments can be seen as complex systems and how system oriented ...

The majority of manufacturing enterprises is currently trying to become more competitive in the preparation of customer-centric and innovative products. The focus of manufacturing paradigm is changing from a mainly sales-driven business towards a provider of utility or benefit to the customer. Consequently, the traditional product definition must be extended. Based on the description of the concept of extended products, this paper discusses approaches to extend the classical product definition and the resulting requirements. Additionally, the role of collaboration in enterprise networks will be discussed. Some practical examples are mentioned.