In today's changing world, enterprises need to survive in an ever volatile competitive market environment. Their success will depend on the strategies they practice and adopt. Every year, new ideas and concepts are emerging in order for companies to become successful enterprises. Cross Border Enterprises is the new 'hot' topic arising in the business process world at present. Many terms have been coined together and are being driven in the popular business press to describe this new strategy of conducting business, ie. Extended Enterprise (Browne et al. , 1995; O'Neill and Sacket, 1994; Busby and Fan, 1993; Caskey, 1995), Virtual Enterprise (Goldmann and Preiss, 1991; Parunak, 1994; Goranson, 1995; Doumeingts et al. , 1995), Seamless Enterprise (Harrington, 1995), Inter-Enterprise Networking (Browne et al. , 1993), Dynamic Enterprise (Weston, 1996) and so on. Many people have argued that they mean the same thing, just using different words. Others feel they are different. But how different are they? In this paper the authors will present some basic lines required from this new strategy for conducting and coordinating distributed business processes (DBP), as well as trying to clarify the particularities of two of the widest spread terms related to it: Virtual and Extended Enterprise. 2 CLUSTERS OF PRESSURES The business world currently faces an increased trend towards globalisation, environmentally benign production and customisation of products and processes, forcing individual enterprises to work together across the value chain in order to cope with market influences.

Zusammenfassung
In this paper the authors will present some basic lines required from this new strategy for conducting and coordinating distributed business processes (DBP), as well as trying to clarify the particularities of two of the widest spread terms related to it: Virtual and Extended Enterprise.

Inhalt
One Invited Talks.- 1 Business process and shop floor re-engineering.- 2 IT support for the generic tactical decision making process of pricing in competitive consumer markets.- 3 The time based competition paradigm.- 4 Virtual reality in manufacturing.- Two Virtual Enterprises I.- 5 Cross border enterprises: virtual and extended!.- 6 Towards the virtual enterprise in food industry.- Three Virtual Enterprises II.- 7 Information flows and processes in a SME network.- 8 Developing IT-enabled virtual enterprises in construction.- 9 Using an informal ontology in the development of a planning and control system the case of the virtual enterprise.- Four Learning and Genetic Algorithms.- 10 Federated knowledge integration and machine learning in water distribution networks.- 11 Exploration of an unknown environment by a mobile robot.- 12 Genetic algorithms constraint logic programming. Hybrid method for job shop scheduling.- Five Mechatronics.- 13 Kinematic study of biped locomotion systems.- 14 Adaptive hybrid impedance control of robot manipulators: a comparative study.- Six FMS Control and Tooling.- 15 A cell controller architecture solution: description and analysis of performance and costs.- 16 Strategies and fundamental structures for FMS tool flow systems.- 17 Analytical assessment of tooling requirements for FMS design and operation.- Seven Systems Design and Control.- 18 Sustainable software design with design patterns.- 19 SimBa: a simulation and balancing system for manual production lines.- 20 SOMA: an organic and autonomous approach to manufacturing planning and control.- Eight Simulation.- 21 Life cycle simulation for verifying sustainable model of products.- 22 Manufacturing system simulation model synthesis: towards application of inductive inference.-Nine Multi-Agent Systems.- 23 Multi-agent collaboration in competitive scenarios.- 24 The establishment of partnerships to create virtual organizations: a multiagent approach.- Ten Modeling and Integration.- 25 Business process modelling: comparing IDEF3 and CIMOSA.- 26 Integrating infrastructures for manufacturing: a comparative analysis.- Eleven Systems Integration I.- 27 Designing an Internet based Teleproductics system.- 28 A model of methodology need for AQAL production system.- 29 An interface integrating design and mfg in small size companies.- Twelve Systems Integration II.- 30 Contributions for ethernet based networking in manufacturing systems.- 31 Global AICIME an integrated approach to support SMEs in the global electronic commerce environment.- Thirteen Vision and Sensors.- 32 A measurement software for vision machine applications.- 33 Design and uncertainty of an opto-mechanical device for checking CMM touch trigger probes.- Fourteen Virtual Reality and Education.- 34 Virtual reality full immersion techniques for enhancing workers performance.- 35 Mechatronics education: examples in the UK and a proposal in Brazil.- Fifteen Manufacturing Management Strategies.- 36 Cost-oriented strategic manufacturing and quality planning for BPR.- 37 Experiences in information systems development for maintenance management: a techno-organisational view.- 38 A methodology on work-flow control system in large-scaled job shop line.- Sixteen CAD/CAM.- 39 Enhanced pocket milling strategy for improved quality.- 40 PROBACOM computer aided project based on features.- 41 Manufacturing process modeling method for CAD/CAM and flexible manufacturing systems.- Seventeen Performance Indicators.- 42 Performance indicators and benchmarking in manufacturing planning and controlsystems.- 43 Dynamic Tableau-de Bord: concept, tools and applications.- Eighteen Optimization and Analysis.- 44 Visual modelling interfaces for the cutting stock problem.- 45 Developing finite element simulation of sheet metal stamping process a contribution to virtual manufacturing.- Index of contributors.- Keyword index.