An agent and goal-oriented approach for virtual enterprise modelling: A case study

Abstract

Virtual enterprise established to satisfy the requirements of market is a one-off, dynamic distributed organization. In a virtual enterprise, partners who are selected form an alliance to fulfill goals that otherwise canít be achieved for the limitation of individualís capabilities. Modelling virtual enterprise will assist in analyzing system requirement and facilitating cooperation among the partners. This paper proposes to use strategic actor based on the i∗ framework to model virtual enterprise. The partners are treated as strategic agents and cooperation among them are depicted as dependency relationships. The actors in the model can form a hierarchical and federated architecture and cooperate with each other. So the virtual enterprise paradigm can be analyzed and realized based on the agent and goal-oriented approach. Example from an air-separator virtual enterprise is used to illustrate.