Agent-based virtual enterprise modeling and operation control

We propose an agent-based virtual enterprise model and provide the agent collaboration mechanisms under the model, thereby achieving agent-based virtual enterprise modeling and operation control. We establish a network of distributed activity agents and resource agents for each member enterprise, collaborations among which can deal with activity precedence arrangements and activity-resource assignments in each sub-business-process. Then, we model each member enterprise in the virtual enterprise as an agent. Collaborations among member enterprise agents can deal with activity coordination and resource sharing among various sub-business-processes. Thus, our agent-based approach achieves distributed control over the whole business process execution of the virtual enterprise.