Virtual Inter-firm Collaborative Framework –the Case of an Ic Foundry Joint Venture Project

The design new production and logistics process in a joint venture is crucial to its business success. Joint ventures are common in IC industry, however, much time and resources are used in handling negotiation, which ultimately can delay the implementation of joint venture itself, thereby causing tremendous expected losses to both parties. Therefore, we propose a virtual collaborative framework to assist in analyzing and designing logistic process for inter-firm collaboration in IC industry. We have adopted the enterprise ontology theory to deal with knowledge-sharing problems involving joint venture partners. Additionally, several analytical methods, including causal loop diagram, process chain diagram and UML, are proposed for analyzing various issues at different levels to design a virtual prototype for the joint venture. Keyword: virtual inter-firm collaboration, enterprise ontology, object-oriented analysis, IC foundry, project management