A simulation tool and its role in supporting the management of the transformation processes of Traditional Enterprises into Virtual Enterprises

Enterprises with the capacity to manage to respond to the new market demands and to transform them according to the changing environment have shown their sustainability in the market for long periods. But now-a-days the business environment is turbulent, and even such enterprises may find it difficult to survive. One of the proposals for any enterprise (the existing as well as new and emerging ones) in this turbulent environment is the Virtual Enterprise approach. In this context one of the critical issues is the transformation process of ‘Traditional’ Enterprises into Virtual Enterprises. The paper presents a simulation tool to support the model for the processes transformation and how this tool is to be used in some of the phases of the general transformation process. In the first part of this paper, differences between ‘Traditional’ Enterprises and the Virtual Enterprise approaches are presented. Then, in the second part, a partial model for transformation processes is presented, and in the third part a demonstrator simulation tool is presented as a contribution to support the transformation processes, of ‘Traditional’ Enterprises into Virtual Enterprise, along with a hypothetical example case.