31 AGENT-BASED ARCHITECTURE FOR VIRTUAL ENTERPRISES TO SUPPORT AGILITY

摘要

Global competition forces enterprises to concentrate on their core competencies while transforming themselves to participate in emerging inter-enterprise formations following the virtual enterprise (VE) paradigm. VE is a form that offers high flexibility, agility and resilience for enterprises to survive and prosper in the globalized economy. This paper introduces the real world VE that uses agent-based software to support agility. This research is conducted as a case study in the business network, which consist of several small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and one focal company operating in the steel manufacturing industry in Northern Finland. The new VE, called SteelNet is aiming towards global markets with the support of effective information sharing.