Abstract
Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) are self-driven vehicles used to transport material between workstations in the shop floor without the help of an operator, although they can also be applied in security and exploration. They are widely used in material handling systems and flexible manufacturing systems, where production orders are constantly changing. Today, and due to the constant development of technology, sophisticated machinery is increasingly available, thus enabling manufacturing firms to achieve significant process and setup time reductions. With this development, enterprises are encouraged to leave mass production approaches and start adopting small productions lot sizes, leading to constant changes in the production operation's sequences as well as changes in the factory layout. As a consequence of the development of technology, products started to spend a big percentage of time in the queue line or being transported from one workstation/storage to another. With the introduction of AGVs production process flexibility may increase, which, in many productions processes, is still below the expectations due to the used transportation system (ex: conveyors). At the same time, with the AGVs it is possible, to decrease transportations times and costs. In this article, we will study by means of simulation, the impact of the use of an AGV transportation based system in an industrial coating application. The AGV will be responsible for transporting the parts from the system's entrance to the workstations. With this, flexibility in the production process will increase, which will be reflected in system's productivity. © 2010 IFAC.

Abstract
Industrial managers are in the expectation that the new generation factories bring more competitiveness to the manufacturing companies through innovative approaches, methods and tools that support the factory planning process. The concept of "factory as a product" perceives the factory as a complex long life product introducing design advantages for factory planning and optimization, seeking to improve quality, reduce ramp-up, product delivery and overall reduce time and costs. In order to attain these objectives, there is an urgent need for an innovative and suitable Virtual Factory Framework to structure the development of new generation factories. © 2010 IFAC.

Abstract
The paper underlines the interest of using a performance management system applied to monitor the strategy effectiveness and the interoperation's performance in the collaborative networks (CN). The aim with this study is to verify if a performance management system helps decision-makers reach the alignment among participants in a collaborative network. It is expected that this work provides an adequate tool for supporting quick decisions to meet the feasible and desirable improvements in inter-organisational processes. A framework (CNPMS) is also presented, having been developed to support the dynamic performance management, which was applied in case studies of two Brazilian collaborative networks.

Abstract
In order to fulfill all challenges related to design, management, evaluation and reconfiguration of new or existing facilities, the development of a new, integrated and holistic factory framework is required. In this context, a new requirements model is proposed in the context of the innovative framework called Virtual Factory Framework. Using this approach in factory planning it is expected to improve the ability to generate better and more sustainable solutions over the entire factory life-cycle. This paper underlines the use of the life-cycle paradigm in order to enable the future factory planning approaches.

Abstract
Current market dynamics require European SME's to focus on complex products manufacturing and to build non-hierarchical business networks, to assure competitiveness and sustainability. Such trend demands appropriate methods for network formation and management, including reference collaboration processes and supporting ICT tools. This paper presents a framework to support SME's in the creation and management of non-hierarchical networks designed and developed within the European RTD project Net-Challenge. This framework includes methodologies, processes and ICT decision support tools aiming at the efficient creation and management of these networks assuring quick response times and competitive and differentiated offerings.

Abstract
This paper proposes a new method to manage the use of ontologies in the context of Virtual Organisations Breeding Environments (VBEs). The research focuses on the dissolution phase of a Virtual Enterprise (VE), where ontology decomposition techniques are used to enrich the ontology library. First, an overview of the process used and the Ontology Library System (OLS) adopted are described. Then, the ontologies' ranking and classification method are described, explaining a set of metrics inspired by social network approaches. Finally, the composition method used to construct a global ontology and the decomposition algorithm implemented to segment an ontology are presented. Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.