Negotiation processes within inter-organizational alliances

This paper describesthe negotiation component of E-Alliance, a software infrastructure defined for supporting negotiation activities in concurrent inter-organizational alliances. The E-Alliance’s main intent is to preserve the autonomy of organizations grouped in an alliance. The purpose of this work is to offer support for small and medium enterprises which cannot or do not want to fulfill a big contract alone. This approach is illustrated by a sample scenario where partners are printshops grouped into an alliance to better accomplish customers’ demands.negotiation, middleware, virtual enterprises, multi-agent systems, interaction protocol

A MAS framework for the negotiation based operational integration of virtual enterprises

The virtual enterprise (VE) is an effective way of business operation in the dynamic global market. This paper proposes a multi-agent system (MAS) framework for the negotiation based operational integration of VEs. Firstly, integrating the major VE operational activities into agent functions, a MAS framework is developed to represent the whole life cycle of VEs. Secondly, a negotiation protocol supporting agent argumentation is designed to handle the partner selection and conflict solving negotiation scenarios in the VE context. Finally, the proposed MAS framework is implemented upon the JADE platform. Simulation experiments have been carried out to verify the agent interaction sequences in the negotiation protocol. ©2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe 4th Annual IEEE Systems Conference, 2010, San Diego, CA., 5-8 April 2010. In Conference Proceedings, 2010, p. 535-54

A Novel Partner Selection Method in Virtual Enterprise Based on the Ontology and SOA and AHPmodel

Partner selection is a key problem in virtual enterprise. This paper researches on selecting the dynamic, Competitive and compatible partners, which is the key link in the establishment of virtual enterprise. this paper presented a method have two main steps , first step is detecting candidate partner using semantic concept and second step is selecting proper partner using competency and quality of service in AHP method . The advantage of this method scrutiny of partner selection problem , and partner selection in this method occur dynamic and automation

Multi-tier agent architecture for open service ecosystems

Proceeding volume: Vol-918Peer reviewe

A simulation Approach to Assess Partners Selected for a Collaborative Network

[EN] Manufacturing enterprises are increasingly more aware of the importance of establishing collaborative relationships with their network partners, due to the advantages associated to collaboration. Nevertheless, the participation in a collaborative network (CN) comes with associated challenges, namely the need to reduce the potential for conflicts among partners. A CN consists of heterogeneous partners, each one defining its own objectives and activating its own strategies. In this context, the ability to quickly identify partners with aligned strategies is crucial for smooth operation of the CN. The main aim of this paper is to address the partners' selection problem in the context of Virtual organizations Breeding Environments (VBE) that facilitate and enable the creation of Virtual Organisations (VO), as one type of CN. In a first stage, the sets of enterprises, characterised by having the required competencies to create the VO, are identified among different potential candidates within the VBE. In a second stage, the strategies alignment approach, based on the system dynamics simulation method, is used for the partners' selection process, identifying the best set of enterprises. In this paper, the final stage of partners' selection process is addressed by obtaining the degree of alignment of the business strategies formulated by each set of enterprises. In the light of this, a system dynamics-simulation model, in AnyLogic, is presented to obtain the set of enterprises that have higher levels of alignment in its strategies. The proposed system dynamics-simulation model is applied to a case in the building industry, to deal with the partners' selection problem in a VBE with the aim of forming a stable and sustainable VO.This work has been funded in part by Programa Val i+d para investigadores en formación (ACIF 2012) and by the Uninova–Center of Technology and Systems and the Portuguese FCT-PEST program UID/EEA/00066/2013.Andres, B.; Poler, R.; Camarinha-Matos, L.; Afsarmanesh, H. (2017). A simulation Approach to Assess Partners Selected for a Collaborative Network. International Journal of Simulation Modelling. 16(3):399-411. https://doi.org/10.2507/IJSIMM16(3)3.382S39941116

An environment to support negotiation and contracting in collaborative networks

During the last years, manufacturing and service industries faced a global change in the production paradigm. They have to continuously adapt their operating principles in reaction to new business or collaboration opportunities, where a natural reaction is a shift to a new business paradigm with the creation of strategic alliances for product or services development, but also for innovative and emergent business services design. On one hand, the process of creating such alliances can be rather simple if organizations share the same geographical and cultural context. But on the other hand, considering different conditions, there might be a low success rate in the creation of successful consortia. One known reason for such low rate are the delays resulting from negotiations in the establishment of collaboration commitments, represented by contracts or agreements, which are crucial in the creation of such alliances. The collaborative networks discipline covers the study of networks of organizations specially when supported by computer networks. This thesis contributes with research in this field describing the creation process of virtual organizations, and proposing a negotiation support environment to help participants in the negotiation of the consortia creation process and in the co-design of new business services. A negotiation support environment is therefore proposed and described with its main requirements, adopted negotiation protocol, conceptual architecture, models, and software environment. To demonstrate the feasibility of the implementation of the proposed systems, a proof-ofconcept software prototype was implemented and tested using some specific scenarios. This thesis work has been validated adopting a methodology that includes: (i) validation in the research community; (ii) validation in a solar industry network; and (iii) validation by comparison analysis

AGENT-BASED NEGOTIATION PLATFORM IN COLLABORATIVE NETWORKED ENVIRONMENT

This paper proposes an agent-based platform to model and support parallel and concurrent negotiations among organizations acting in the same industrial market. The underlying complexity is to model the dynamic environment where multi-attribute and multi-participant negotiations are racing over a set of heterogeneous resources. The metaphor Interaction Abstract Machines (IAMs) is used to model the parallelism and the non-deterministic aspects of the negotiation processes that occur in Collaborative Networked Environment

Delivering services by building and running virtual organisations

Non peer reviewedPostprin