Knowledge Applications Development at the SMEs Level in a Virtual Business Environment

The paper presents the implementation and usage of a Knowledge Management (KM) system for an industrial holding of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). It pursues the application of service oriented architecture to business interaction across collaborative SMEs in virtual enterprise environment. The work analyses the KM system and proposes a KM scenario to support knowledge applications (KApps) development in SMEs. The core components are described and evaluated from a real organization perspective. It is proposed the informational and communication infrastructure and the procedure of partner selection based on KApps in an industrial holding organized by a dynamic alliance of SMEs.