Using Agents to Support the Selection of Virtual Enterprise Teams

Virtual Enterprises are dynamically constituted by individual entities that come together as a team to achieve specific goals. This dynamic nature imposes strong demands on the formation of the Virtual Enterprise since the capability of effectively putting together the best team of individuals is key to the success of the Virtual Enterprise itself. In this paper, we propose an agent-based model to support the formation of Virtual Enterprises. In our approach, each individual entity is represented by an agent who, in the context of an electronic market place, competes to become partners of a VE. The paper describes the attributes of the agents that are required and the issues facing the selection of the partners. In particular, it stresses the need to select partners by considering not the individual entities alone, but also how they can contribute to the desired team of partners.