An Agent-based Approach to Support the Formation of Virtual Enterprises

This thesis presents an agent-based approach to support the formation of Virtual Enterpises. Virtual Enterprises are formed by individual entities that come together as a team of partners that collaborate to achieve a specific goal. The dynamic nature of Virtual Enterprises imposes strong demands on its formation. Thus, the capability of effectively assembling the best team of partners is key to its success. The aim of this work is to consider a Virtual Enterprise from the point of view of Enterprise Modelling and Enterprise Integration and to propose an agent-based approach for supporting the formation of VEs quickly and efficiently. The agent-based support is aimed at providing decision-making support for human beings by using software agents in the evaluation and selection of partners for a Virtual Enterprise. The agent-based approach uses software agents to represent the partners of a Virtual Enterprise and consists of an agent-based model, the Virtual Enterprise formation process and a multi-agent architecture to support the formation process. The agent-based model proposes a means of defining the main concepts of a Virtual Enterprise: goals, activities, roles, requirements and agents, and the relationships among them. The Virtual Enterprise formation process is analysed as an Agent Interaction Protocol to identify the interactions among the agents and the information that is exchanged. The AGORA multi-agent architecture has been adapted to support the formation process. The work presented in this thesis is based on both theoretical and empirical work. The initial ideas were based on the literature and experiences from industry and two research projects CAGIS and Globeman 21. The agent-based approach was validated using several industrial case studies. The agent-based approach, which considers the concept of a Virtual Enterprise and its formation process in terms of agents is the main result of this work. The main contributions are an agent-based definition of a Virtual Enterprise, an agent-based model of a Virtual Enterprise, Agent Interaction Protocols for the formation processes and a multi-agent architecture to support the formation of Virtual Enterprises. The case studies provided an evaluation framework for the applicability of this agent-based approach and a set of requirements to improve it.