Book Contents and Index

Annotated Table of Contents

Preface: Why Study the Agile Virtual Enterprise?

Agility and the Virtual Enterprise

The U.S. Department of Defense with the National Science Foundation sponsored the core of this work after some remarkable disappointments in research programs. The recognition was that the whole system, the enterprise needed to be addressed, novel ideas like the virtual enterprise needed to be enable and the ability to respond quickly needed to be enhanced.

How the Project/Book Was Put Together

Thousands of researchers and users provided input through various modes, including a focused set of workshops over three years.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Agility is a business requirement, especially as a remedy to an unwise rush to lean manufacturing. Toyota is an example.

Agility is Different

The consumer electronics industry is an example of how you can do all the ordinary things right and still fail. Agility is necessary but differs according to context. Wang and IBM are examples. Agility can be used as a stragic weapon: Chrysler’s (accidental?) use of agility against Ford is given. Burger King is a great example of how agility can be used as a strategic weapon against the competition. We describe the strategy. A similar series of agile steps are outlined in the electronic gaming sector.

Chapter 2: An Historical Example

Military Research “Can” Do’s and Don’t’s

Government research in agility tools has a history. An example of problems in forecasting is research into tin canning food.

A Review of Best Agile Practices

Since it will take time to evaluate whether an agility strategy was best, we looked at historical examples and discovered the whaling industry. This detailed example permeates the book. It is an example of a large, strategically important virtual enterprise which turned out to be agile.

Some Lessons Learned

Factors which contribute to the whaling success are homogenous culture which generated a case-law based ethical system of instant contracts. The enterprise infrastructure takes on a life of its own.

Chapter 3: The Social Factor

Social and Cultural dynamics are a key factor in the AVE.

Waterworld

The movie industry is the descendant of the whaling industry. The disasterous film, Waterworld, is an example of a mixup in the cultural infrastructure.

Role of Culture as an Agent

Several examples of culturally-driven virtual enterprises exist and are discussed here: Indian software collectives, the Russian Mafia, and a forthcoming experiment in distributed automobile manufacturing.

Chapter 4: Cultural Memes

The English and French Engineering Paradigms

The nature of cultural conventions in contract law is examined more closely as self-propogating infrastructure. In particular, one can understand how this works by examining two competing models, both of which are found in the business environment. Their legacies are pegged to English and French traditions respectively.

Lessons for Management Metrics

One can see how inappropriate application of each of these models can result in inagile, inefficient systems. We give a specific rather critical example from the defense arena.

Law Follows Engineering

One can also see how the social infrastructure drives the legal infrastructure and how both define the engineering paradigm of the enterprise.

Chapter 5: Empirical Principles of AVEs

High Concept in the Virtual Enterprise

A key element of the AVE is the ability to calibrate everyone on a unified goal. The existing technique is “High Concept” descriptions. We describe their use in the movie business, and the surprizing link to Japanese industrial planning.

High Concept in Organizing the Virtual Enterprise

High Concept is easy to understand but hard to engineer. We need a new science to enable this, and we describe some leverageable techniques.

Three Visions of the Future

A detailed technical roadmap exercise looked at the High Concept and developed three visions of the enterprise of the future, together with technical needs. We recount them here in order to flesh out the mechanics of High Concept in the gerenarl business case.

The Bottom Line

Chapter 6: Agility and the Defense Industry

The Need for Agility

Going back to the link among advanced Japanese industrial planning, the movie business, and the aerospace business, we explore some surprizing links that can help identify leveragable techniques.

Necessity of Government Investment

Some of these leverageble ideas are applicable to government action. In this section, we review the roles and benefits of government action within the infrastructures. We review these actions and agencies in the next few sections.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency

Why We Were Sponsored

One of the government roles is behind why we were sponsored. Those dynamics are reviewed.

The Story So Far

Chapter 7: Definitions

Having outlined the territory, we now turn to specific definitions.

Virtual Enterprise

We define four types of VE.

Agility

Here, we give our definition of agility and contrast it to the use of the term by others.

Types of Change

You need agility to respond to change, but change has several faces. We define and discuss those here.

Metrics

In order to engineer your enterprise, you need metrics to measure agility. In this long section, the notion of metrics is defined and contrasted to less formal characterizations.

Chapter 8: What Agility Is Not

Lean Manufacturing and Agility

Agility is not lean and the two often work against each other.

The Agile Virtual Enterprise and Electronic Commerce

The AVE dynamic is more sophisticated than ecommerce as usually understood. We explain how.

Flexible Manufacturing

Flexible manufacturing is agile manufacturing limited to the shop floor.

Static Business Practices

We contrast agility to activity-based costing and enterprise resource planning.

Techie Solutions

We also contrast agility to concurrent engineering, enterprise integration, product data management, and object oriented modeling.

Chapter 9: Issues

A Tool Strategy

Here’s how you would fit the engineering of agility into your other corporate planning tools.

Summary of the Method

We give an overview of how the agility tools work, and what preparation is required.

Limits of Our Approach

As with any technique, there are limits to what can be done. We discuss them here.

Agility Forum and A3 Agility

The definitions and techniques we use differ substantially from those used by the Agility Forum. We outline the differences here and why they are important.

Chapter 10: The Agile Virtual Enterprise Reference Model

Now we turn to specific tools. In this lengthy chapter, we describe the reference model for virtual enterprises defined by the Focus Group.

The Reference Model

Here is the actual definition of the reference model consisting of enterprise infrastructures and life cycle decisionpoint processes. A couple hundred agility examples are included.

Infrastructure Elements

Infrastructure Observations

Best Agile Practice Examples

In the context of the reference model, we present eight case studies of enterprises that exhibited some best agility practices.

Chapter 11: Communicative Acts and Information Theory

The central tool we present is based on a specific formal theory. Here, we give a non-technical overview of that theory.

Leveraging Information Theory

The foundation is information theory. We outline its important points.

Communicative Acts

The expression of the theory is in a specific way of representing processes and decisions. We briefly described this method, known by many.

Modeling by Communicative Acts

We give a brief tutorial on how to model this way, and outline what the advantages are.

Parallel Trends in Theory

If one uses this technique, many analytical benefits follow. In particular, analyses based on other theories are automatic. We present what those theories are and how they can be used.

Bottom Line

Here us a brief summary of the chapter.

Chapter 12: Examples

Use of the Metrics

Having provided so much background, we now turn to a simple walk-through of how to use the metrics to engineer agility into your enterprise, virtual or not. We include a warmup example.

An Example

Here is an example that is worked out in detail, in a long section with many graphics.

Application in the Real World: A Case Study

The cost of applying the tools is an issue. We conducted a cost case study, the results of which we present here. This aslo serves at yet a third example which is worked out in detail.

Deeper into a Case Study

Cost and Benefits

The final result of the examples is to present in time and money the costs and benefits of various agility strategies.

Costs

We present here the detailed cost breakdown of performing the analysis.

Chapter 13: Trust

An Example of the Problem

We now turn to a key dynamic that has appeared in all our cases: that of engineering trust. Here is an example of an apparent good idea failing because it destabilized the trust network.

Inductive and Deductive Trust

We need a formal understanding of trust. So here we define what we mean by trust, contrasted to less stringent meanings.

Mitigated Inductive Trust

Here’s how the engineering of trust supports the engineering of agility.

Truth

Trust depends on a definition of truth which often is local. Here are some dynamics of trust that you have to consider, some not intuitive.

Agents and Channels

Having trust in an agent is different than having trust in the way that agent works with you. We have good tools for understanding one but not the other, so we outline some basic principles where needed.

Trust Metrics

In particular, we submit some “trust metrics” for the interactions in an enterprise which extend the idea of agility metrics.

Chapter 14: Summary and Tools

Strategy (“Threat” and Options)

Here we review a demonstration tool for strategic planning, Turnip, that we created to support the agility methods described here. Turnip is downloadable from this site if you wish.

Complexity

Here’s how agility and our tools in particular form a method for managing complexity in the enterprise.

Softness

There is a need to understand and model the social and cultural dynamics of the enterprise. The methods in the book go a long way toward providing revolutionary new tools in the regard.

State

The final big challenge to enterprises involves the notion of knowing, perhaps in great detail, what state evrything is in. The outstanding technical issues are presented here including some progress provided by the agility tools.

Dooley Graph Calculator

We created a demonstration Dooley Graph calculator, Pomegranate, which you can download here if you wish. Its function is described here.

Conclusion

Chapter 15: Bibliography and References

Index

A very nice index, which you can see below

Index

Aerospace Agile Manufacturing Research Center. See Organizations: Aerospace Agile Manufacturing Research Center

Agents

actons defined, 240

actor, 222

analyzer, 222

change monitors in partners, 142

communicative acts, 102

emergent behavior as agility, 163

federatable executables, 163

horizontal channels, 222

late binding, 241

notion of action, 162

open agent enterprises, 46

opportunity identification, 115, 132

partner search, 140

sensor, 221

shop floor, 131

trust, 43

trusted agent, 220

trusted agent channel, 221

using communicative acts, 161

vertical channels, 222

virtual enterprise organizer, 72

Agile Virtual Enterprise Focus Group. See Research projects: Agile Virtual Enterprise Focus Group

Agile virtual enterprise reference model, 109 to 143

Agility

agility budget, 189

and activity-based costing, 91

and business process re-engineering, 91

and concurrent engineering, 93

and enterprise integration, 94

and enterprise resource planning, 91

and flexible manufacturing, 90

and modeling, 101

and object orientation, 97

and product data management, 96, 186

and rule-based technology, 147

and total quality management, 91

as creativity, 68

best agile practice survey, 107, 144 to 155

costs, 203 to 209

defined as capabilities, 104

defined as evolution, 105

definition, 3, 68

information infrastructure definition, 127

legal certifiers, 129

legal/explicit infrastructure definition, 128

limits, 102 to 107

metrics defined, 74

modeling, 102

partner search, 119

physical infrastructure definition, 130

research needs, 48

second-order agility, 103

social/cultural infrastructure definition, 127

three principles, 43

types of change, 73

Agility Forum. See Organizations: Agility Forum

AIM-9X. See Research projects: AIM-9X missile

Apollo mission, 32

Apple. See Companies: Apple Computer

ARPA. See U.S. Government Agencies: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Augustine, Norman, 33

Automation and Robotics Research Institute. See Organizations: Automation and Robotics Research Institute

Brazil, 225

CALS. See Research projects: Computer Aided Logistics Support, 34

Carroll, Lewis, 239

Case law

agility environment, 83

and oil industry, 13

and privateers, 17

and trust, 215

English influence, 29 to 33

Federal Acquisition Regulations, 36, 82

in film industry, 12

influence of Quakers, 14, 53

inheritance of comman law, 35

Iranian food distribution system, 216

Russian substitute, 24

Soviet Union not follow, 30

Uniform Commercial Code, 35

Center for the Study of Language and Information, See Organizations: Center for the Study of Language and Information

Chomsky, Noam, 172

Communicative acts, 158 to 171