An Agent Based Tool to Support Tactical Dialogues in Industrial Enterprise Networks

The globalization of competition has entailed that organizations of developed countries have toface a new kind of competitor with low labour costs, and often-advantageous exchange rates (resulting infavorable export selling prices). In such a state of affairs, innovation and organizational flexibility are becoming fundamental levers to enable enterprises to increase their competitiveness. Consequently, the need arises for a formalized methodology that enables organizational flexibility and capacity of performing innovation. These findings originate 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 that has the role of enabling innovation in a collaborative environment to reach world class manufacturing capabilities. A multiagent system based on architecture is proposed to model and support tactical dialogues inside the network. The VDO has been modeled 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 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 through collaborating opportunities.