Affiliation/dissociation decision models in demand and capacity sharing collaborative network

Abstract

This research addresses affiliation/dissociation (A/D) decision models in a collaborative network (CN) of enterprises when an enterprise or a set of enterprises needs to evaluate the anticipated reward of enterprise collaboration. In this research, a set of enterprises forms a CN for the purpose of sharing their demands and capacities by predefined protocols. An enterprise in the CN determines an affiliation decision with the CN when the collaborative condition of the enterprise has been altered. On the other hands, the CN determines a dissociate decision with a member enterprise of the CN when its performance impairs entire enterprise collaboration. Under the assumption used in this research, experimental results and analyses indicate that a single enterprise always prefers to affiliate with the CN in terms of demand fulfillment rate and total profit. The CN should, however, dissociate from a particular member enterprise of the CN when this enterprise's mean demand (or capacity) is at least a value that can be calculated relative to the mean demand (or capacity) of all the other collaborating enterprises. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.