Knowledge management based collaboration moderator services to support SMEs in virtual organizations

Abstract

Collaboration Moderator Services (CMS) are discussed as a Knowledge management service for SMEs operating in a virtual organization (VO). In this research, a CMS supports the pre-creation stage of a VO by quickly identifying potential business opportunities and collaborative partners. Text mining techniques are used to analyze calls for tender documents based on the competencies and areas of interest stored in the shared information about companies in a collaboration pool. A case study of UK-based SMEs demonstrates the application of text mining as a knowledge discovery tool, supporting SMEs at the pre-creation stage of a VO. Results show that text mining can be used to (1) identify possible business opportunities for SMEs in the collaborative network (2) Indicate potential collaborations between pairs of SMEs using link analysis and (3) Raise awareness of business opportunities and possible SME partners for multi-enterprise collaborations using a dimensional matrix.

Keywords:

• Knowledge management
• collaboration
• moderator
• text mining
• SMES

Acknowledgement

Authors would like to acknowledge European Union EuropeAid-funded Project “EU-India Research & Innovation Partnership for Efficient and Sustainable Freight Transportation (REINVEST),” Contract Number: R/141842. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the authors of this paper and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alok K. Choudhary

Alok K. Choudhary is a Reader in Supply Chain Management and the Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies. His research focuses on developing tools and techniques to support collaboration among SMEs. Recently, Dr. Choudhary has focused on interdisciplinary, industry-driven and applied research to investigate Sustainability of Logistics and Supply Chain Industry. He has led research projects funded (over £2.5 Million) by European Commission, European Union, EPSRC, British Council and other sources for Ph.D. studentships. Alok’s international, industrial and cross-disciplinary collaborations within the University has resulted in research publications with high industrial relevance. He has authored/co-authored 50+ research publications in high impact factor and leading international journals including the International Journal of Production Economics (IJPE), IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Journal of Cleaner Production, Computers in Industry, International Journal of Production Research, Computers and Operations Research and Annals of Operations Research.

Jennifer A. Harding

Jennifer A. Harding is Professor of Intelligent Manufacturing Knowledge Systems and Director of Academic Staffing in the Wolfson School at Loughborough University. She has supervised 19 successful Ph.D.s and EngD in the area of intelligent manufacture, knowledge management and collaborative working and has received research funding from Europe, EPSRC and industry on topics in intelligent manufacturing. She is a member of the editorial board for the International Journal of Production Research (IJPR) and a member of International Program Committee for many international conferences including, International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics, International Conference for Interoperability for Enterprise Software and Applications and International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Information Retrieval.

Manoj K. Tiwari

Manoj K. Tiwari is a Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. His research interests are in the Operations analysis in Supply Chain Networks using Optimization, Simulation and Computational Intelligence techniques. His research interests have been supported by several industries, national and international research funding agencies. He has published more than 240 papers (Scopus H-index-35) in the International Journals of repute and he has been rated as Rank 1 among top 100 individual researchers across the world who had published research articles in International Journal of Production Research during the time period 1985–2010. He is the recipient of Most Influential Researcher Award, ranked 5th among top ten authors in India, a top 20 most productive authors in the area of Production and Operations Management. He is serving as an Associate editors of IEEE System, Man and Cybernetics-System (SMC-S), International Journal of Production Research(Taylor and Francis), Computers and Industrial Engineering (Elsevier), International Journal of System Science (Taylor and Francis), Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing System (Springer), Sadhana (Springer) and Neuro-computing (Elsevier) and Decision Support Systems (Elsevier). Prof. Tiwari is in the editorial board of several International Journals.

Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar is Amar S. Gupta Chair Professor of Decision Science and leading the Operations and Supply Chain Management Group at Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.) Delhi, India. He has published over 300 research papers in leading journals and International conferences. In a paper published in Omega: An International Journal of Management Science in 2016, he has been ranked as the most productive researcher in Business schools in India. He has supervised 38 Ph.D. scholars and over 100 Master’s thesis. He has co-authored textbooks in Operations & Supply Chain Management and Technology Management.