A methodology to characterise cooperation links for networks of firms

Networks of industrial small and medium enterprises are often framed thanks to pre-existing personal relations between managers. This way of building networks is satisfactory in terms of trust between partners, but tends to ignore potential efficient links with other firms. This article provides a methodology to characterise cooperation links objectively and to identify potential ties for enterprise networks. It is based on a theoretical approach combining complementarity of activities and similarity of competences within firms. Activities are modelled with graph theory, and competences with fuzzy sets. This allows plotting cartographies describing potential relationships within a group of firms. The illustration given here is an example of the utilisation of this methodology in the mechanical sector.