Map based information sharing to support virtual enterprise activities

A virtual enterprise seems to be a feasible solution which can flexibly reorganize virtual structure in order to cope with radically changing market. However, the virtual organization sometimes makes its personnel's fellowship and realistic feeling weaker than ordinary one. Even if the structure is virtual, the enterprise has connection to the real world, i.e., it is required to make products/services appear on the market and to make a deal with customers and other companies. In order to eliminate extra cost, a virtual enterprise should be aware of influence of the real world and pay much attention to geographic information provided by people who concern the enterprise. In this paper, we will discuss map based information boards through which geographically distributed people can share various kinds of information. This paper enhances the ability of co-existence relationships previously proposed by authors. By applying extended co-existence relationships, each user easily obtains arbitrary maps which satisfy his/her requirements. These tailor-made maps can support all persons who concern the virtual enterprise to share various kinds of information. The enterprise utilizes the information in order to make decisions for its strategy.