# Collaborative Planning in Non-Hierarchical Networks--An Intelligent Negotiation-Based Framework
## 1 Introduction  
As a result of the latest technological, economic, and financial changes, the market landscape has been altered, forcing company managers to reinvent the concept of enterprise. Over the past decade, a heightened level of complexity has emerged, compelling managers to place greater emphasis on the service levels they offer. This entails reducing response times and addressing the specific requirements of a growingly diverse customer base. Simultaneously, managers are comprehending the fact that market competition is shifting from company centered scenarios to supply chain networks with complex inter-organizational structures and intricate networked manufacturing processes. Consequently, the industrial sector is witnessing an increasing adoption of collaborative strategies to tackle the manufacturing complexity associated with highly customized products. This shift places a stronger emphasis on service levels and the urgent need to reduce response times. The networked organizations that have emerged in this decade present immediate challenges in effectively managing material and information flows throughout the supply chain. These challenges are particularly crucial in demand-driven supply networks, especially for innovative and fashionable products, due to their inherent complexity and unpredictability. The recent market characteristics are compelling independent manufacturing companies to seek out new forms of organizational structures to embody shorter lifetime existences. Due to the need for creating innovative products in shorter periods of time andwith reduced costs, a new concept of cooperation between companies has surfaced, i.e., the concept of collaborative networks. This new organizational structure enhances a stronger commitment among independent companies to tackle a common business opportunity by using their complementary skills and capabilities [1; 2; 3]. Focused on integrating these collaborative networks, companies now face the challenge of organizing their internal business processes in an efficient way to promote integration and quick response inside the collaboration processes established with the other partners. These new business processes effectively demand new methods, tools, and technological solutions to cope with de networked operation environment [4]. Specifically, the business processes related to collaborative network formation and network production planning pose significant challenges. Collaborative production planning derives from the need for synchronization of a company's production plans and the necessity to manage the allocation of resources in an effective way to achieve the desired performance (price, delivery time, quality level, and others) [5; 6]. Companies that embrace the challenges of distributed planning face complex and critical problems. In consequence, to maximize efficiency of their processes, they are heavily dependent on the appropriate decision support systems and optimization tools [7; 8; 9]. The main objective of the present paper, partially framed within the EU (European Union)-funded project CoReNet, is to present an intelligent collaborative planning framework for SMEs (small and medium enterprises) independent companies in collaborative networks to support network formation, network production planning, and knowledge sharing across the supply chain of innovative and fashionable products. The present framework solution stands out for its innovative implementation of a non-hierarchical decentralized collaborative planning tool. In contrast to previous projects and research groups in the field, the current approach distinguishes itself by moving away from centralized planning decisions and embracing non-hierarchical negotiation.