# Collaborative Planning in Non-Hierarchical Networks--An Intelligent Negotiation-Based Framework
## 3 Framework Proposal  
Traditionally, for industrial companies, one of the most critical business processes is production planning. In networked organizations, the production planning function attains new levels of complexity and has a massive impact on the overall performance of the supply chain. When addressing practical and intricate networked production planning scenarios involving innovative and fashionable products, such as those found in the textile or footwear sectors, several important issues come to the forefront. These include the preservation of local autonomy for each entity, the reluctance to subordinate to a central authority, ensuring confidentiality of business information, and fostering transparency in negotiation processes. Starting with the issues and the requirements explained earlier regarding the decentralized collaborative problem, the present paper proposes an intelligent collaborative planning framework. The preliminary research work that resulted in the present proposal was initially based on the European Union-funded project \"customer-oriented and eco-friendly networks for healthy fashionable goods (CoReNet)\" that aimed to provide industry companies with the tools and methods to face the challenge of working in demand-driven and customer-oriented collaborative networks for innovative and fashionable product supply chains. The proposed framework considered four main stages in the supply network's lifecycle (see Figure 2):  
* Process planning: product designing with the identification of the internal and external components to establish the generic production process. * Partner search: creation of a supply network, including the formalization of the contract with partners. * Operation: collaborative planning, manufacturing, and delivery by the supply network. * Dissolution: closure of the supply network. Both the partner search and operation stages require planning procedures since a consistent and real quotation is needed to be presented to the customer, not only considering prices and materials, but also providing a delivery date or a production lead time. The related supply network planning operation needs to allow direct cooperation and collaboration among the involved partners. The main features presented In this partner search tool are as follows:  
* Search for partners on two different domains: internal (among already known suppliers) and external (internet). * Use of syntactic and semantic engines to refine and filter search. * Use of user-defined criteria to perform search. * Use of mash-up services to filter results. * Saving of results in different areas--staging area for results to be evaluated and partner area for to-be-used results. When examining the operational phase of the supply network lifecycle, the proposed approach incorporates four primary phases within the planning sequence for supply networks:  
* Partner search: creation of a supply network, including the formalization of the contract with partners and suppliers and overall process plan. Figure 2: CoReNet framework for dynamic supply network operation. * Aggregate planning: rough production plan for customer quotation. * Detailed planning: detailed production plan definition with optimization of costs. * Dispatch: definition and dispatching of production orders for the entire supply network. Both the aggregate and the detailed planning phases require decentralized collaborative planning procedures (see Figure 3) since a consistent and real quotation needs to be presented to the customer, not only considering prices and materials, but also providing a delivery date or a production lead time. The related supply network planning procedure needs to allow direct cooperation among the involved partners.