E-CONTRACTING FOR SMEs THROUGH AN ENGINEERING E-HUB

摘要

This paper presents an e-engineering contracting system developed for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) by the EU funded e-HUBs project ("e-Engineering enabled by Holonomic and Universal Broker Services", IST-2001-34031). As a dedicated service within the Business to Business (B2B) arena, the engineering e-Hub is designed to facilitate the outsourcing of engineering services. The project developed a transparent, online collaborative project preparation and contracting workspace to enforce process and knowledge modelling, sharing and configuration, online contracting, and trust building. It lowers the major barriers that prevent SMEs from entering e-Business.