The proposed Co-ordination Action CO-DESNET aims to promote the diffusion of the European scientific knowledge on the problem of designing and managing large-scale multi-functional multi-agent Collaborative Demand and Supply Networks, i.e. large-scale networks of production and service enterprises operating within a common industrial sector. The CA activities will be devoted to organizing a European Virtual Institute: a permanent network linking all CA partners and other members in the future, based on a vertical web-portal.
This portal will supply
(l) a Virtual Library of documentations concerning supply chains and related topics;
(2) a Virtual Agency of information about conferences and meetings;
(3) a Discussion Forum for academic and industrial actors.
The co-ordination activities will consist of:
(1) setting up of groups of experts in the supply chain design and management;
(II) exchange and dissemination of study reports and research results on the demand and supply networks;
(111) setting up of a common information system dedicated to design and management issues in supply chain field;
(IV) organisation of meetings, conferences, and special issues of international journals in the emerging trends on supply chains and networks.
With regard to the relevance to the CA objectives in view of NMP Priorities, the proposed CA will promote events on the R and D problem of organising supply chain management structures in the form of knowledge communities of autonomous agents. Presently there is a lack of knowledge on this subject, because it is a cross-sectional problem and it needs collaboration among researchers in manufacturing fields and disciplines like organisational management, communication patterns, and information technologies.
To this aim, the participants to the project are well spanned among universities (15), enterprises (5), public and private research centres (2). They belong to 8 member Countries and 3 associate Countries.

• Desarrollar instrumentos que propicien una visión estratégica conjunta en la cadena de suministro y fomenten las alianzas estratégicas entre los agent

• Desarrollar plataformas tecnológicas de intercambio de información desde el punto de vista de la Interoperabilidad