A customer centred infrastructure for cooperative new product development in the virtual enterprise

1be furnil11re markel in Italy is characterizcd by small traditional companies. The small size derivcs from an old bandcraft tradition. In these sen·iogs the integration problems are very difficult to taclde and they involve ail of the supply chain and ali of the product life chain. lo this work we preseot ao extended enterprise oriented architecture for cooperative product design aod production integration. We descnbe an integraled hardware and software environment where it will be possible to simulate aod test new configurations of extended forniture enterprises, with a particular interest for the supply area, io way to improve the custorner salisfactioo.