Game theoretic enterprise management in industrial collaborative networks with multi-agent systems

Nowadays, virtual enterprise (VE) is an important paradigm of business management in an agile environment. VE exists in several kinds of business organization through multi-layered product flows. It is obvious that a mechanism, through which these different enterprises can be integrated together, is required for the better management of VE. In this paper, we focus on the negotiation process in VE formulation as a basic research to clarify its effective management. Each enterprise in VE is defined as a software agent with multi-utilities, and three types of primitive business models are targeted, such as the vertically integrated business model, horizontally specialized business model and hybrid business model. We develop a three-layered VE model for computer simulation so as to clarify VE formulation dynamism with the proposed negotiation mechanism.