An Agent Based Tool to Support Tactical Dialogues in Industrial Enterprise Networks: model and experimental campaign

The globalization of competition has entailed that organizations of developed countries have to face new kind of competitors with low labour cost, and often-advantageous exchange rates (resulting in favourable export selling prices). In such a scenario, innovation and organizational flexibility are becoming fundamental levers to enable enterprises to increase their competitiveness. For this reason, the need arises of a formalized methodology that enables organizational flexibility and capacity of performing innovation. This work originates from the analysis of a case study which highlighted that enterprise networks can enable organizational flexibility, and defined the formalization of the VDO concept – Virtual Development Office – a network organizational model based on an independent subject which has the role of enabling innovation in a collaborative environment to reach world class manufacturing capabilities. A multi-agents system based architecture is proposed to model and support tactical dialogues inside the network. The VDO has been modelled as a supervisor and coordinator agent able to perform a selection process in order to create the best coalition for managing emerging business opportunities. The context analyzed in this research work assumes a virtual market place where enterprises, represented by agents, can „„meet each other‟‟ and cooperate in order to achieve a common business goal given by a collaboration opportunity. Key-Words: Enterprise Networks , Virtual Development Office, Multi-Agent Systems, Decision Making, Case Study