International FAIM Conference 24th : 2014 : San Antonio, TexasUniversity of Texas at San Antonio. Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean SystemsAzevedo, AméricoFerreira, FilipeFaria, José2022-07-112022-07-112014http://dx.doi.org/10.14809/faim.2014.0223https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12588/962Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing, held May 20-23, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, University of Texas at San AntonioIncludes bibliographical referencesThis paper proposes a framework to support the full virtual manufacturing enterprise lifecycle from the creation to the operation and dissolution. The paper will show how the framework supports the activities involved in the setup of virtual manufacturing enterprise, how to run it and which tools are needed. Three main perspectives are considered: knowledge and information, methodology and Technology. A business case analysis is then presented in order to understand the framework applicability to the development of collaborative business opportunities in an engineer-to-order and one-of-a-kind production environments, which is common to a large number of SMEs.en-USVirtual corporationsProduct life cycleManufacturing processes--AutomationArticle