An Agent-based approach to modelling Virtual Enterprises

1. An Agent-based approach to modelling Virtual Enterprises Sobah Abbas Petersen, Monica Divitini, Mihhail Matskin International Journal of Production, Planning and Control – special issue on Enterprise Modelling, 12(3):224-233, April 2001

2. Goals • Model a Virtual Enterprise (VE) using agents • Use a multi-agent architecture - AGORA, designed for cooperative work, to model a VE. • Provide a homogeneous modelling environment for all phases of the VE lifecycle.

3. What is a VE? • A VE has the following characteristics: • Formed to achieve a goal - goal-oriented. • Consists of autonomous entities that cooperate to achieve the goal(s). • The entities that form a VE may not belong to the same organisation. • Geographically distributed. • Not a rigid organisational structure. They are flexible and evolve over time.

4. Analyse the lifecycle of a VE • Use GERAM: • Identification - identify the need for a VE. • Concept - define objectives, strategies, business plan, goals, etc. • Requirement - define operational requirements of the VE. • Design - identify information and resources to work in the VE. • Implementation - allocate resources to do the work. • Operation - develop VE products. • Decommission - complete work and close-up of VE.

5. Modelling Needs • Identify the different participants and their roles in each phase: • e.g. Customer, VE partners. • Identify the cooperative work • e.g. Coordination, negotiation. • Identify the resources used in the work • e.g. Information sources, documents.

6. Requirements to model VEs • Needs an environment that is: • able to model the cooperative work among the participants. • provides support to the flexibility that is required by the VE. • provides uniform support throughout the lifecycle of the VE. • Supports reuse of the models of the VE (or parts of it).

7. What is an Agent? • An agent can be defined as a computer system that has the following properties: • Autonomy • Social ability • Reactivity • Pro-activeness • Goal-oriented • Designed to operate in distributed environments • Handle sophisticated interactions such as negotiations

8. Why Agents & Virtual Enterprises? • Agents provide support for the properties of VE. • Agents can provide a flexible means of modelling the VE in terms of cooperative work. • Agents are computational entities. Thus the resulting model provides an easy and efficient passage to the required computational support. • We have used a multi-agent architecture, AGORA, that considers “cooperative work” as its central issue.

9. Agora multi-agent Architecture • AGORA is designed to support cooperative work. • Central concept - Agora: a meeting place for agents. • Agents: • Default - Agora Manager • Registered • Participants of the cooperative work, e.g. agents representing VE participants, human beings. • Cooperative Mechanisms, e.g. coordination and negotiation agents. • Service agents, e.g. information agents, search agents. • Agents can register at several Agoras at the same time. • A structure of Agoras can be formed.

10. Modelling a VE in AGORA AGORA Manager (Default Agents) Participant 1 Manager Info Service Coordination Participant 2 Coordination Agent VE Agora Negotiation Agent Participant n Service Agent Agora Human being or organisation Agora Manager Registration Participant Part of the Agora Cooperative Mechanism Human represented by an Agent Service Agents

11. Requirements PhaseDefine operational requirements of the VE. • Roles: • VE Initiator(s) • Customer • One or more partners that are interested in forming the VE • Cooperative work: • Coordination of activities • Negotiation to arrive at an agreement • Other: • Need for information sources and information search

12. The Requirement Agora Customer Agora Manager Initiator Interested partner 1 Requirement Agora Coordination Agent Interested partner 2 Negotiation Agent Interested partner 3 Information (service) Agent Tools (service) Agent Information Sources Supporting Tools (e.g. Modelling tools, Word Processors) Registers Access information

13. Cooperative Work in the Requirement Phase Negotiation Agent Customer Interested Partner 1 Agora B Agora A Coordination Agent Agora D Negotiation Agent Agora C Initiator Interested Partner 2 Negotiation Agent

14. Implementation PhaseAllocate resources to the VE • Roles: • Customer • One or more potential partners that are interested in joining the VE • Note: The initiator may be a potential partner or the customer. • Cooperative work: • Negotiation to arrive at an agreement - establish the terms of work. • Other: • Need for information sources and information search

15. Negotiation Agent Potential Partner 1 Coordination Agent Agora Y Potential Partner 3 Coordination Agent Agora Z Negotiation Agent Agora X Potential Partner 2 Coordination Agent Cooperative Work in the Implementation Phase

16. Evolution of partner roles Evolution of the Agoras Requirement Agora Implementation Agora Evolution of the Role Interested Partner Potential Partner Participant Role Participant Role Human being or organisation

17. Summary • We have: • Proposed the use of agents to model VEs. • Focused on modelling the cooperative work in VEs. • Achieved this through the multi-agent architecture, AGORA. • AGORA has proved usable throughout the lifecycle of the VE. • AGORA also provides the flexibility required to model the VE.

18. Future Work • Further analysis of a VE in terms of cooperative work. • Enhance the AGORA architecture to provide additional support to cooperative work. • Understand the structure of Agoras and their relationships in terms of the evolution of the VE. • Study how the context of one Agora is transferred to another.

19. Definitions of Virtual Enterprises • A temporary network of independent companies who are linked using information technology (Jagdev and Browne, 1998). • A corporation that is able to gather and integrate a massive flow of information throughout its organisational components and intelligently act upon that information (Davidow and Malone, 1992). • A temporary, cooperative network that is formed by independent, autonomous companies to exploit a particular market opportunity (Fischer et. al, 1996; Rub and Vierke, 1998; Clements et. al., 1997).

20. Definitions of Virtual Enterprises, contd. • An enterprise that is mostly made of functions provided by other enterprises and relies heavily on the use of standards, computer communications and electronic data interchange (Vernadat, 1996). • An amorphous entity which is a combination of different companies or individuals that have been combined to complete specific projects or business propositions and development (Lawrence, 1998).