Abstract
Today, the variety of complex products, low volume and decreasing life cycles require a combination of multiple skills that, often, do not exist in a single organization. This raises the need to extend the traditional organization towards the extended virtual enterprise. During the last decade several research projects developed concepts, methods and tools to support the design and operation of the virtual enterprises. However, the impact in industry remains low mainly due to the lack of vertical and horizontal integration, both at business and technical level. Industry 4.0 may be the missing enabler for effective virtual enterprises, once it integrates both business entities and technical entities into a single concept - the Industry 4.0 component - thus enabling enhanced interoperability. This paper presents innovative Industry 4.0 approaches, concepts, methods and tools applied to real manufacturing environments, showing how they enable the creation of cyber-physical production systems leading to a flexible, efficient and seamlessly virtual enterprise.

Abstract
This paper presents a novel approach on flexible and knowledge intensive process management, driven by a large automotive industry case study. The automotive company in analysis requires a very dynamic behaviour, based on high flexibility of both people and equipment. Market has been imposing a decreasing of automotive products life cycles, increasing the number of line adaptations during the entire value chain, resulting in an increased complexity from product design to production. To handle this complexity, new knowledge-based methods and technologies to model, simulate, optimize and monitor planned and existing manufacturing systems are required. Existing large Enterprise Information Systems impose totally structured and predictable workflow, while knowledge intensive processes are flexible and unpredictable, involving high amount of human-decision and interaction. This lead to the need of development of highly specialized applications. This paper presents a novel hybrid approach, including work, information and communication management, to support knowledge intensive processes. The application of the new solution in the automotive engineering process management proved to be very effective and efficient, leading to significant savings.

Abstract
The rise of a new digital industrial paradigm known as industry 4.0, powered by several enabling technologies such as flexible and collaborative robots, autonomous vehicles, internet of things, cloud and manufacturing servitization, is seen as the key enabler for the fourth industrial revolution: the digital manufacturing. However, there are still several challenges related to the effective adoption of these technologies and to enterprise level interoperability so that an entire cyber physical production system can work seamlessly. Besides the set of challenges faced by industrialists, this research work presents innovative results towards a plug and play seamlessly integration of technologies, from the shop floor to the enterprise management layers, ensuring a total integrated architecture supporting the full product lifecycle management.

Abstract
Today, manufacturing is moving towards customer-driven and knowledge-based proactive production. Shorter product life cycles lead to increased complexity in areas such as product and process design, factory deployment and production operations. To handle this complexity, new knowledge-based methods and technologies are needed to model, simulate, optimize and monitor manufacturing systems. Product lifecycle management research tends to focus on situations that are responsive to formal analysis and modelling. However, in several domains such as knowledge intensive collaborative environments, it's not possible to model processes using formal notations. Knowledge based and collaborative process management involves a combination of structured and non-structured processes. Structured processes management can be reduced to a set of fully-defined rules leading to high efficiency but also low flexibility, whereas the management of non-structured processes is not prone to a full formalization. A combination of both structured and unstructured management approaches is required in order to achieve a successful trade-off between efficiency, flexibility and controllability. We call a process as semi-structured when it contains both structured and non-structured sub-processes leading to a flexible and efficient hybrid approach. Large enterprise information systems, impose structured and predictable workflows, while knowledge based collaborative processes are unpredictable to some extent, involving high amount of human-decision. Moreover, large enterprise information systems are not able to manage the daily ad hoc communication inherent to the knowledge-based process itself. This paper introduces a set of concepts, methods and tools of an innovative Hybrid Process Management approach validated by a real world business case in the automotive industry.

Abstract
This paper proposes a framework to support the full virtual manufacturing enterprise lifecycle from the creation to the operation and dissolution. The paper will show how the framework supports the activities involved in the setup of virtual manufacturing enterprise, how to run it and which tools are needed. Three main perspectives are considered: knowledge and information, methodology and Technology. A business case analysis is then presented in order to understand the framework applicability to the development of collaborative business opportunities in an engineer-to-order and one-of-a-kind production environments, which is common to a large number of SMEs.

Abstract
The focus of this paper is to elaborate collaborative business process monitoring within virtual factory (VF) environment in a smarter way. This process monitoring is tracked through visualisation over a user interface such as 'dashboard'. This research briefly provides all aspects of implementing process monitoring through the dashboard user interface and explains technical aspects of monitoring. The dashboard features state-of-the art business intelligence and provides data visualisation, user interfaces and means to support VF partners to execute collaborative processes. With advanced visualisations that produce quality graphics it offers a variety of information visualisations that brings the process data to life with clarity. This data visualisation provides critical operational matrices (e.g. KPIs) required to manage virtual factories. Key reporting outputs such as KPIs and day-to-day operational data can be used to monitor and empower partners' processes that help to drive collaborative decisions e VF broker or partners' also retain full flexibility to create, deploy and maintain their own dashboards using an easy to understand wizard-driven widget and an extensive array of data visualisation components such as gauges, charts, maps, etc. Various technical aspects of this dashboard user interface portal are elaborated within the scope of this research such as installation instructions, technical requirements for the users and developers, execution and usage aspects, limitations and future works. In addition to the dashboard user interface portal this research also investigates the VF life cycle and provides architectural framework for VF. The research work highlighted in this paper is conceptualised, developed, and validated within the scope of the European Commission NMP priority of the Seventh RTD Framework Programme for the ADVENTURE (ADaptive Virtual ENterprise ManufacTURing Environment) project.