What is the VEC-Hub?

When a number of companies work together to produce a product, they may form a virtual enterprise that spans multiple extended enterprises. It is unlikely that the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) approach used by the multiple companies will be aligned, i.e. same tools used by each extended enterprise. Even if that is the case these COTS tools will be configured differently which complicates the information exchange.

In such collaboration it is essential to always know where to find approved data and how to notify other stakeholders of changes to that data. If data is not managed properly, configuration management and issues arising from it will consume a lot of time and resources during the lifecycle of the product. By sharing data, configuration management can be managed with less effort during the full life cycle of the product independent of in what phase of the lifecycle the product is.

The VEC-Hub Concept and accompanying guidelines specifies how a number of “services” provide collaborative and shared data functionality to a set of partners working together.