Studies on agent-based cooperation for virtual enterprises

Abstract

This paper presents a formal method of agent-based cooperation for virtual enterprises. In order to support the cooperation of virtual enterprises, a process model of the virtual enterprise based on process decomposition and activity description is built. There are many constraints in the relation of tasks which compose the process, such as enables constraints and facilitates constraints. Each task can be decomposed into a lot of activities. We represent the activity, state, task and constraints in enterprise ontology in which the semantics are provided by situation calculus. The process model is used as a common recipe to schedule the cooperative work among agents in virtual enterprise. We puts forward an activity model, intention model, skill model and companion model to implement cooperation among agents.