Strengthening the competitiveness of Eastern European SME clusters by implementing an open-source-based collaboration tool

The Tool and Die-making industry in Eastern Europe faces strong competition from the Far East. Most European companies are highly specialised SMEs producing complex one-of-a-kind products used in mass production. The customers are mainly large global players expecting faster, cheaper and more efficient delivery of the complex tools. Often SMEs do not have resources to response to these requirements alone. It is therefore imperative to form sustainable collaborative networks. Inter-organisational collaboration not only requires changes in organisational structures but also the ability to exchange business information, retrieve it, access it, process it and electronically communicate it to all the actors involved in any given business transaction. To do this, SMEs require collaborative ICT tools that enable seamless information exchange. There are a number of ICT solutions and middleware which support such collaboration, but these are often not affordable or suitable for SMEs, which in Europe, average less than ten employees. This article presents an initiative aiming at improving the collaboration ability of SMEs by introducing a concept comprising a specific business process reference model and a modular open source-based collaboration tool with ERP/CRM functionalities, which can be integrated into already existing software systems allowing seamless information processing. Thereby, it will strengthen the competitiveness of Eastern European SMEs as well as improve their ability to collaborate. The approach presented in the proposed paper is basing on the work carried out by the European funded research project Tool-East (EC Contract No. IST-FP6-027802)