Petite ou moyenne entreprise | EPFL Graph Search

Une petite ou moyenne entreprise (ou PME) est une entreprise dont la taille, définie à partir du nombre d'employés, du bilan ou du chiffre d'affaires, ne dépasse pas certaines limites ; les définitions de ces limites diffèrent selon les pays. L'Union européenne définit la « catégorie des micro, petites et moyennes entreprises (PME) » et, au sein de celle-ci, les petites entreprises et les microentreprises. La règlementation française distingue les « microentreprises » de moins de (également appelées très petites entreprises (TPE)), les « petites et les moyennes entreprises » (PME) de , les « petites et moyennes entreprises industrielles » (PMI) de , les « entreprises de taille intermédiaire » (ETI) qui en comptent entre , et les « grandes entreprises » (GE) dont l'effectif est supérieur ou égal à . Dans les pays anglo-saxons, on retrouve généralement le terme small and medium enterprises (SME) en Europe ou dans les organismes internationaux, et small and medium businesses (SMB)

A Digital Platform connecting Academia and Small Businesses: An opportunity for Knowledge Management Experiments

Quentin Adrien Cavillier

Digital transformation is one of the biggest phenomena of this decade. One enabler of this revolution was cloud computing. Today, software engineers can deliver software as a service (SaaS), which is accessible to users through the Internet. Slack, Shopify, and Dropbox are examples of successful SaaS. We are experiencing an emergence of numerous small web applications with easy-to-use features for specific domains such as project management, accounting, resources management, customer relationships, and so forth. Thus, SaaS has been recognised as particularly well suited for the digital journey of small enterprises. However, surveys conducted by governmental agencies reveal a low adoption rate of SaaS by small enterprises in traditional sectors such as construction, services, and dealership. Previous studies have highlighted a lack of top management support, a weak relative advantage perceived, and a lack of knowledge as the key reasons for this low level of adoption. Whilst academic research defines these critical factors, it has not found potential solutions to mitigate them. Thus, this thesis presents two exploratory studies to enhance the adoption of digital practices by small traditional enterprises (STEs). A first study explored the value of leading collaborative projects between students and STEs about the assessment of SaaS solutions. A secondary objective of this initiative was the design of a platform acting as an open innovation platform. A three-year study allowed the completion of thirty-nine projects and the testing of two different platform designs. The feedback from students demonstrated the value of a well-structured platform composed of different management models for each project phase. Furthermore, 67 per cent of the STEs involved on the platform acknowledged the value of such collaborative projects. However, the collaborations did not improve top management support, and projects tended to stagnate because of various organisational factors. A second study, using a mixed-methods research design, was performed to explore the relations amongst the organisational factors acting as enablers and barriers to the digitalisation of STEs. The objective was to improve understanding of TSEs' situation and devise a proposition to enhance top management support. An academic contribution of this study was the design and application of a conceptual framework combining organisational factors from the literature on dynamic capabilities, organisational inertia, and intellectual capital. The combination of the qualitative observations and quantitative results highlighted the importance of the sensing and leadership capabilities for STE directors. They also revealed the mediator effect of the relational capability on the development of these latter. Therefore, this thesis makes important contributions to the literature on open innovation by defining a new field for leading knowledge management experiments. It also contributes to develop a comprehensive overview of the organisational factors affecting STEs' adoption. A further major contribution is the potential value of the digital platform to innovate the services of practitioners, such as governmental agencies and consultants, that support STEs on their digital transformation journey. In conclusion, this research is valuable in opening the discussion about potential innovations that might reshape the relationship academia-business.

EPFL2019

Are the Innovation Needs of Low-Technological Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Line with Knowledge Production by Research Institutions?

Camille Marguerite Aouinait

Small agricultural firms have to cope with increasing economic, legal and environmental difficulties. The purpose of the paper is to identify whether there are available research outputs to these challenges, focusing on the Swiss traditional fruit sector. Identification of firms' needs using face-to-face interviews and a focus group allowed us to prioritize innovations. Knowledge and innovation transfer gaps were identified thanks to bibliometric analysis, providing hints for research program orientations. The main sectoral needs were related to varieties like increasing pest and disease resistance, weather sensitivity, and ripening behavior. Knowledge produced by research institutions was partly related to the firms' needs. The study demonstrated a need for better coordination between agricultural stakeholders and researchers. Knowledge must be transferred and shared in the network with greater efficiency by extending interactions and involving stakeholders earlier in the innovation process. However, the search for scientific outputs should include more specificities of the local environment.

DE BOECK UNIV2019

Towards Seamless Continuation of Knowledge in Product Lifecycle Management

Apostolos Perdikakis

The current ICT for manufacturing landscape is characterized by scattered data formats, tools and processes dedicated to different phases in the product lifecycle. Due to the diversity of tools and data formats, manufacturing struggles to cope with new trends in this area. What is clearly missing in the current ICT landscape for manufacturing is an integrated, holistic view on data about products to be manufactured, resources (including human resources) and processes across the full product lifecycle. There is a need to formalize knowledge for the automatic integration in existing engineering tools. In this work ontology-based semantics were exploited to develop machine-understandable models, which are able to understand the meaning of the data and information they contain. The system developed using semantic web methods and tools is designed to support interoperability and data integration, as well as lead a way towards the usage of information contained in the system to extract useful knowledge. This knowledge may provide feedback for improving the design of future generations of products. Thus, the concept of seamless continuation of knowledge all along product-system lifecycles is introduced.The first step of this work was to study the state-of-the-art in PLM and Semantic web Technologies. This included theoretical background in concepts like Beginning Of Life (BOL), Middle Of Life (MOL) and End Of Life (EOL) regarding PLM as well as the definition and theoretical background of Ontologies and Semantic Web Technologies. After completing the study of theoretical background, more advanced research concepts and methodologies for both domains were thoroughly analysed. Examples include Closed Loop Lifecycle Management (CL2M) for PLM and NEON Method-ology for Ontology engineering. The next logical step followed was to find and discover relevant standards like STEP for PLM and W3C standards for Ontologies and Semantic Web Technologies. The engineering aspect of this study imposed the review of available tools both for PLM and Ontology Engineering. Ontology development tools like Protégé, TopBraid composer and Anzo Ontology editor were studied. More advanced software solutions for applications of the semantic web were also studied. Examples include Anzo Enterprise and the Open Semantic Framework. Inspiration also came from previous European projects like EC FP6 Promise. The problem of discontinuation, even after an Ontology model is created, is evident in most of the applications studied as background of this work. Ontology models have to be exploitable and that requires a framework of which they can be part of. The research for successful implementations of ontology driven frameworks was imperative. At first, the open seman-tic framework (osf) was the software stack that came into focus. After being thoroughly studied, it proved difficult to deploy and maintain, for it had still many problematic areas with its configuration and required people with very ad-vanced software skills (both in programing and system configuration). Nevertheless, the examples of use are promis-ing and give many ideas for exploitation. This finding triggered the efforts towards the definition and application of the solution proposed in this work, which has the following characteristics. First and most important, the solution is easy to deploy and maintain, since it is targeting SMEs and large enterprises that want to test the capabilities of the proposed[...]

EPFL2015