The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, we want to describe the results achieved in the SCOOP project. That is, we will describe an interorganizational production planning system and broker that support human planners during order intake by supplying a number of alternative production plans using internal and external resources. Plans are rated according to rules specified by the user who only has to take the final decision. Four main software modules implement this functionality: a local PPS that assigns jobs to resources, an extension for communication with external PPSs allowing the seamless integration of external resources, and economic suitability analysis tool that rates production plans, and finally, a broker that opens up the networks to companies without PPSs. Secondly, we will describe and analyze two bottlenecks that still hinder the wide-spread use of the SCOOP solution. The analysis will reveal approaches how these bottlenecks can be addressed and we will describe our envisaged solution.

This paper presents a novel approach supporting administrative tasks within the lifecycle of design projects. Based upon comprehensive models of design environments and design activities it combines techniques known from project management and mechanisms for design flow control. As a result it allows the planning, controlling and reviewing of design projects and supports algorithmic estimation of task durations and automatic computation of plan revisions.

A library of basic elements of hybrid electronic circuits has been developed and implemented in VHDL at Stuttgart University. It was shown, that VHDL, designed for digital circuits, can also handle the behaviour of analog components.