An agent based tool to support tactical dialogues in industrial enterprise networks

  • Authors:

  • Marco Botarelli;Paolo Taticchi;Roberto Revetria;Flavio Tonelli

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy;Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy;Department of Production Engineering, Thermo-energetic and Mathematical Models, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy;Department of Production Engineering, Thermo-energetic and Mathematical Models, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

  • Venue:
  • ICS'08 Proceedings of the 12th WSEAS international conference on Systems
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

The globalization of competition has entailed that organizations of developed countries have to face a new kind of competitor with low labour costs, and often-advantageous exchange rates (resulting in favorable export selling prices). In such a state of affairs, innovation and organizational flexibility are becoming fundamental levers to enable enterprises to increase their competitiveness. Consequently, the need arises for a formalized methodology that enables organizational flexibility and capacity of performing innovation. These findings originate from the analysis of a case study which highlighted that enterprise networks can enable organizational flexibility, and defined the formalization of the VDO concept - Virtual Development Office - a network organizational model based on an independent subject that has the role of enabling innovation in a collaborative environment to reach world class manufacturing capabilities. A multi-agent system based on architecture is proposed to model and support tactical dialogues inside the network. The VDO has been modeled as a supervisor and coordinator agent able to perform a selection process in order to create the best coalition for managing emerging business opportunities. The context analyzed in this research assumes a virtual market place where enterprises, represented by agents, can 'meet each other' and cooperate in order to achieve a common business goal given through collaborating opportunities.