During many years, companies have focused their efforts on optimising the use of their technologies, machines and materials to decrease costs and enhance performance. Nowadays, technology is not anymore sufficient for insuring competitiveness, and performance becomes more and more dependent on human resource management.

Human workforce appears in the modern context as a natural source of flexibility and reactivity, like automation was a natural source of productivity optimization in the past. This evolution leads to re-consider process management activities or functions, and to skip from technology-centred processes to knowledge-centred processes. Considering human resource as the main source of performance requires a more precise formalization of know-how, knowledge, competence or skills, in order to be able to efficiently link people to process activities. In that context, the VIMation VirtuE "Knowledge and Competence Management" has as its main objective a better integration of human resource characteristics in manufacturing processes.

Two main research axes are suggested:

• knowledge capitalisation and reuse, especially through experience feedback and lessons learned processes,
• integration of human resource in simulation, planning and scheduling through competence modelling.

Some application fields of these research axes are:

• human resource-oriented planning and scheduling,
• simulation of manual processes,
• integration of human resource in process modelling,
• implementation of experience feedback lessons and learned processes,
• knowledge capitalisation in manufacturing processes,
• acceptance of ERP systems,
• ...