A neural network model for the assessment of partners’ performance in virtual enterprises

In response to increasing international competition, enterprises have been investigating new ways of cooperating with each other to cope with today’s unpredictable market behaviour. Advanced developments in information & communication technology (ICT) enabled reliable and fast cooperation to support real-time alliances. In this context, the virtual enterprise (VE) represents an appropriate cooperation alternative and competitive advantage for the enterprises. VE is a temporary network of independent companies or enterprises that can quickly bring together a set of core competencies to take advantage of market opportunity. In this emerging business model of VE, the key to enhancing the quality of decision making in the partner companies’ performance evaluation function is to take advantage of the powerful computer-related concepts, tools and technique that have become available in the last few years. This paper attempts to introduce a neural network model, which is able to contribute to the extrapolation of the probable outcomes based on available pattern of events in a virtual enterprise. Quality, delivery and progress were selected as determinant factors effecting the performance assessment. Considering the features of partner performance assessment and neural network models, a back-propagation neural network that includes a two hidden layers was used to evaluate the partner performance.     

面向虚拟企业的制造任务描述及制造链构造方法研究

分析了珠江三角洲企业对制造协作网的需求，介绍了建立制造协作网的背景，重点针对制造类任务，探讨了基于制造协作网的制造任务描述方法，特别提出了采用特征映射技术实现的制造任务描述方法，在此基础上，提出了合作伙伴的寻找策略及有关关键技术问题的解决方法。     

虚拟企业产品设计技术研究

传统的产品设计方法在虚拟企业环境中已不能完全适用。在分析虚拟企业产品设计过程特点的基础上,提出了基于ＧＴ的虚拟企业产品设计系统体系结构,讨论了它的关键技术,包括面向合作企业设计－制造能力的产品设计方法、产品可制造装配性综合评价、企业信息模型、合作企业优化选择。     

Formation of dynamic virtual enterprises and enterprise networks

This paper addresses the preparation and set up of virtual enterprises and enterprise networks. A virtual enterprise (VE) can be perceived as a customer solution delivery system created by a temporary and re-configurable information and communications technology (ICT) enabled aggregation of competencies. The main achievements of the research include: (1) Clarification and definition of the concept for virtual enterprises and enterprise networks including preparation of these. (2) Development of a framework and a reference architecture for virtual enterprises named as Structured Methodology and ICT Reference Architecture respectively. Structured methodology structures the body of knowledge related to preparation, setup, and operation of virtual enterprises and enterprise networks. ICT reference architecture consists of three levels with seven layers to portray in a diagrammatic fashion how different enterprises may exchange and use information between their respective organizations’ specific proprietary systems and a central server. (3) Development of a methodology for virtual enterprise named as virtual enterprise methodology (VEM). VEM consists of a set of guidelines, which systematically describes activities that enterprises should consider in relation to set up and preparation of own enterprise networks with the aim to set up virtual enterprises. (4) Testing and validation of the developed VEM with the realization of a virtual case study. Virtual case study demonstrates and validates the application of the developed VE methodology with the illustration of the key activities related to setting up breeding environment, setting up and operating VE and dissolution of VE.     

Partnership Synthesis for Virtual Enterprises

The virtual enterprise (VE) concept is one of the most important ways to raise the agility and competitiveness of a manufacturing enterprise. Under this concept a master company develops its products by using the manufacturing resources of external partners. Thus product design and partner selection or partner synthesis become two important issues. In this paper, we propose an integrated product design and partner synthesis process model, and develop an architecture of computer-aided product design and partner synthesis system for the VE (CAPDPS), in which product design and the partner synthesis module and the respective databases are implemented. Partner synthesis activity, in this paper, is divided into two phases: partner type synthesis and partner instance synthesis. In the partner type synthesis phase, group technology (GT) is applied for retrieving and selecting potential partners. In the partner instance synthesis phase, more factors other than the cost are identified, and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method is employed to select the best partner from the potential ones. A specific automobile manufacturing group (including master company and its partner factories) and its typical product – automobile steering assembly – are used as a case to verify the feasibility of the proposed approach.     

虚拟企业伙伴选择中的多目标决策问题

在竞争，合作，动态的市场环境中，虚拟企业被认为是21世纪最有竞争力的企业运行模式，但如何选择合适的伙伴，则是虚拟企业能否组建成功的关键。在应用整数规划描述虚拟企业伙伴选择多目标决策模型的基础上，给出了支持伙伴选择的多目标决策工具与算法，并以实例说明该工具能有效支持虚拟企业伙伴的选择。     

基于Web Services的多Agent虚拟企业信息系统的集成研究

为支持虚拟企业的高效运作,针对虚拟企业信息系统的开放性、系统可重构、软件可重用和规模可扩展等特性,用具有自主、智能等特性的Agent来扩展Web Services技术,提出了一种基于Web Services的多Agent虚拟企业信息系统集成框架.通过讨论将Web Services和Agent技术融合在虚拟企业信息系统集成中的优越性,分析了基于Web Services 与Agent技术融合的虚拟企业信息系统设计思路,并结合分析对节点企业内部子系统、Web Services与Agent的互操作框架和UDDI系统模型进行了设计,最后给出了基于上述方法和设计思路的集成框架模型.     

虚拟企业环境中的项目调度方法

虚拟企业以分布，协调的方式实现项目任务的新的组织模式，给项目管理的研究和应用都提出了新的挑战，任务调度所需信息的不确定性及俱本盟员利益同整体项目利益的潜在不一致性，是造成虚拟企业项目调度困难扩要原因。本文在模糊描述企业状态信息的基础上，给出一种通过由盟主和潜在盟员之间的协调，在优化时间指标的条件下，将子调度方案的形成和盟员选择集成在一起制定全局预测调度方案的过程，并给出了预测调度方案在盟员企业内部具体执行过程中的姿源分配策略。     

基于Agent的虚拟企业合作伙伴选择方法

提出了一个虚拟企业合作伙伴选择过程模型和基于Agent的合作伙伴选择系统，系统包括核心企业Agent域和合作伙伴Agent域，核心企业Agent域由管理Agent、任务规划Agent和评价Agent组成。介绍了规划Agent把一个任务分解为多个子任务组成的工作流，以及决策Agent中模糊变量的创建方法、基于XML的模糊规则表示方法和推理机的工作原理。     

An agent-based infrastructure for virtual enterprises using Web-Services standards

Nowadays, most products in the market are increasing unlikely manufactured entirely within a single company. Instead, a network of manufacturing companies, usually known as a Virtual Enterprise, is involved. Each of the companies becomes a node in the network to play a role in the value-adding process in the production cycle. In other words, a Virtual Enterprise (VE) is an ad hoc organization that combines the competencies of its partners and commits its resources flexibly to respond to business opportunities. To facilitate effective collaboration, suitable information systems that can enable VE partners to communicate and share data, information and knowledge across organizational boundaries are essential. One of the major obstacles towards achieving this goal is a lack of standardized technologies to allow partnering enterprises to publicise their services and expertise as well as locating and interacting with one another in a dynamic fashion. This paper proposes a multi-agent infrastructure to manage VEs and support XML-based agents coordination using a contract net protocol and Web Services standards. Feasible agent-based architectures for partnering enterprises are also suggested and illustrated.     

Intranet/Extranet/Internet-Based Quality Information Management System in Expanded Enterprises

Because of e-commerce and the global economy, industries are challenged by world markets and modern enterprise morphologies, such as agile supply chains, expanded companies and virtual enterprises. Enterprises are thinking more and more about the market, customers and suppliers. Product quality is judged by the global market and the customers in the world village, and not only by the domestic market and customers. Enterprise quality assurance systems not only cover internal functional departments in an enterprise, but are expanding to external parties, such as customers, partners and suppliers, so, an expanded enterprise’s core competencies or leadership capabilities in quality assurance have to be strengthened by the complementary capabilities of partners. The traditional quality assurance technologies have to be innovated. It is reasonable that "customer focus" and "mutually beneficialsupplier relationships" blend into the core concepts of a quality management philosophy. As tools used by enterprises to support quality management, quality information management systems (QIMS) have to capture quality information from both internal and external parties, and to facilitate the communication environment, in order to share quality information among enterprises, customers and suppliers. Because of this, it is impossible for a traditional quality information management system based on the Intranet to meet these needs. In this paper, a model of the expanded enterprise is extended. A concept model and a functional model of the quality information management system based on Internet/Extranet/Intranet (IEI-QIS) are proposed. The system is able to integrate quality information from the enterprise, product customers and suppliers, and serves as a powerful tool to benefit the quality management of modern enterprises. A browser/server-based and the three-layer system architecture of IEI-QIS are also investigated. ID="A1"Correspondance and offprint requests to: Tang Xiaoqing, School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing 100083, PR China. E-mail: tanghuan@public.fhnet.cn.net     

虚拟企业中零件信息在线访问系统

定义了一个能够支持企业不同部门以及不同企业共享数据与服务的零件信息在线访问系统的体系结构,介绍了组成该系统的数据维护、公布、搜索、展示、用户管理、管理构件,描述了根据零件功能的分类方法和零件类型的数据模型和用户方案、供应商方案。     

Virtual enterprises partner selection based on reverse auctions

Partner selection is a key issue in the development of an effective coalition formation mechanism for virtual enterprises (VE). Combinatorial reverse auction can be applied by a firm to select the best partners to minimize the cost in forming VE. The objectives of this paper are to propose architecture for selecting partners based on combinatorial reverse auction mechanism to minimize the cost of VE, develop algorithms to find a near-optimal solution efficiently, and implement a prototype system based on the proposed algorithms. We formulate the partner selection problem based on combinatorial reverse auctions and apply Lagrangian relaxation technique to solve the problem. Our partner selection solution algorithms include an algorithm for solving bidders’ subproblems by exploiting their problem structures, a subgradient algorithm for solving the dual problem, and a heuristic algorithm for finding a near-optimal solution. In addition to theoretical development, we also implement a prototype system based on the proposed algorithms and web services technologies to verify the effectiveness of our methodology.     

基于多智能体和合同网的虚拟企业伙伴选择

合作伙伴的选择是虚拟企业组建和运行的关键,通过引入多智能体和合同网的概念,提出了一种基于企业目标和任务调度的动态伙伴选择模型。该模型首先将企业的总目标分解为一组子目标,并由盟主Agent向候选盟员Agent发布企业需求信息;然后盟主Agent与有意参与投标的盟员Agent进行谈判协商,并采用多属性效用理论对所有候选盟员进行评估,确定最优的合作伙伴。当所有候选盟员都不满足要求时,系统将对企业的目标体系和约束条件进行修改,重新进行伙伴的选择。最后以大型水轮机设计伙伴选择为例,叙述了该伙伴选择模型的具体应用。     

面向协同产品商务的企业信息集成平台研究

为支持虚拟企业间基于网络开展协同产品商务,分析了面向协同产品商务的企业信息集成需求。在此基础上,提出了一个面向协同产品商务的企业信息集成平台的4层体系结构,给出了平台的功能模型,论述了平台的运行机制,研究了基于该平台的企业集成、面向协同产品商务的产品信息建模,以及基于可扩展标记语言的产品信息共享等关键技术。最后,利用J2EE技术进行了系统实现,并给出了一个应用实例。     

基于多智能体的虚拟企业的构建及运行研究

目前，多智能体技术被认为是研究分布式智能系统的最重要的方法，在分析多智能体技术在虚拟企业中应用的可行性与有效性的基础上，提出采用多智能体构建虚拟企业参考体系结构，给出了对虚拟企业的各自治成员企业进行Agent封装的Agent通用框架和使用多智能支持虚拟企业全生命周期的方法，并探讨了虚拟企业的运行机制。     

面向虚拟企业合作伙伴选择的信息搜集系统

简要介绍Mobile Agent的开发平台Cougaar,提出一个基于多Agent的面向虚拟企业合作伙伴选择的信息搜集系统,详细描述位于核心企业和伙伴企业节点上各个Agent的工作原理和实现方法。系统可以直接访问合作伙伴的网站,实现信息的自动搜集,提高了虚拟企业的敏捷性。     

基于B/S结构的动态联盟组建与项目管理

讨论了动态联盟的特点及分类 ,针对目前国内企业对动态联盟的需求特点 ,提出了一种基于 B/ S结构的动态联盟的组建方法和可行的合作伙伴选择评估方法 ,介绍了动态联盟组建过程的工作流控制方法 ,最后提出了基于B/ S结构的网上项目管理方法     

Correlation-aware web services composition and QoS computation model in virtual enterprise

When establishing a virtual enterprise (VE), how some enterprises with different resources and advantages form the alliances by providing respective services to compose the VE for certain profits, it is actually a process of services composition. There always exist a lot of web services with similar functions but different non-functionality properties in the process of web services composition. In order to enhance the quality of service composition, non-functionality properties, i.e., quality of service (QoS) are usually considered. However, most existing works about QoS-based service composition treat the services involved in composition as independent from each other, and their correlations are usually ignored. In fact, most services have some correlations with each other, and the correlations can affect the whole quality of service composition badly. In this paper, three kinds of correlations in services composition are investigated, and a correlation-aware QoS model is studied. The impact of each kind of correlation on the whole QoS of services composition is investigated. A case study indicates that higher quality of services composition can be achieved when considering the correlations among composite services.     

支持动态联盟的工作流管理

动态联盟构建不仅需要实现信息集成 ,而且需要实现过程集成 ,日益成熟的工作流管理技术为此提供了有效的支持工具。文中首先强调了工作流管理中知识的重要地位 ,提出了一个四视图 (过程、组织、资源和知识 )扩展工作流模型 ,并对动态联盟工作流管理四个视图分别进行了分析。最后给出了基于自治节点的工作流管理系统框架。