study of virtual organizations using multi-agent system
Virtual organization refers to the temporary teaming of enterprises. To realize this new generation of business model, the ability to form and operate virtual organization is very important. The paper describes our experience gained by implementing a multi-agent system that simulates an artificial marketplace, from which we have derived several decision-making mechanisms in various stages of a virtual organization. A negotiation protocol and a bid selection algorithm are developed for agents to form a virtual organization. MQ framework is adopted to support the agent's local reasoning process. In order to better understand the organizational problem, we adapt a statistical model that predicts the expected rewards of individual agents and the performance of the virtual organization. The comparison and analysis of the results from both the simulation and the model prediction are also presented in this paper.
virtual organization multi-agent systems simulation agent control motivational quantities