Dynamic Mechanisms of Task-assignment for Virtual Enterprises Based on Multi-agent Theory

With increased global competition and ever-changing customer demands, manufacturing enterprises have to cope with changing markets that are unpredictable and diverse, which leads to the emergence of the virtual enterprise (VE). On the other hand, as enterprises concentrate on their core competencies and economic benefit VEs is becoming a growing trend. In a VE, any member enterprise should take initiative in involvement according to the internal production condition, which is changing dynamically with independent management sovereignty. Just under the environment, this paper develops a dynamic multi-agent-based task assignment system including Production agent, Information control center agent, Task Agent and Resource Agent, for VEs, attempting to address the selection of individually managed partners and the process of assigning tasks to them. Finally, decision-making mechanisms of task assignment such as partner-selection decisions, resource agent-selection decisions as well as task-selection decisions were studied.