Stochastic partner selection for virtual enterprises: a chance-constrained approach |
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Authors: | José Crispim Nazaré Rego Jorge Pinho de Sousa |
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Affiliation: | 1. Escola de Economia e Gest?o, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal;2. INESC TEC, Porto, Portugalcrispim@eeg.uminho.pt;4. INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal;5. INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal;6. Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal |
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Abstract: | A virtual enterprise (VE) is a temporary organisation that pools the core competencies of its member enterprises in order to exploit fast-changing market opportunities. Making successful collaborative partnerships is, in this context, a major challenge in today’s competitive business environments. The success of such a ‘virtual’ organisation is strongly dependent on its composition, and the selection of partners becomes therefore a crucial issue. This problem is particularly difficult because of the uncertainties related to information, market dynamics, customer expectations and technology speed-up, with a strongly stochastic decision-making context. In this paper, a chance-constrained approach to rank alternative VE configurations in business environments with uncertainty, and vague and random information, is proposed. This approach is based on a two-stage model: a chance-constraint multi-objective directional Tabu Search metaheuristic, complemented by a 2-tuple fuzzy linguistic representation model. Preliminary computational results clearly demonstrate the potential of the approach for practical application. |
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Keywords: | virtual enterprise stochastic methods Tabu Search linguistic approach |
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