An ontological intelligent agent platform to establish an ecological virtual enterprise

A virtual enterprise (VE) is a dynamic alliance of companies collaborating for the accomplishment of a specific business goal. To establish a VE, it is very important for the VE initiator to select appropriate partners. General criteria such as price, lead time, quality, etc. are the major concerns for most VE initiators. However, in today’s environmentally conscious society, environmental issues such as enterprise green image, product eco-design, etc. are increasingly receiving attention. Thus, it is worth to research on how to select the appropriate collaborative partners to establish an ecological VE.The objective of this paper is to establish a multi-agent system platform for individual companies to form an ecological VE based on ontology theory and intelligent agents. The ontological approaches include shared ontology construction, ontology matching, ontology integration, ontology storage and ontology reasoning. In the generalized case that the VE initiator is a manufacturer and the collaborating partner are suppliers, the multi-agent system comprises three types of intelligent agents, namely, knowledge manager agent (KMrA), manufacturer agent (MA) and supplier agent (SA). MA and SA represent the capabilities and interests of the VE initiator and the VE partners, respectively. KMrA is in charge of functioning sub-tasks of the ontological approach. To select partners for the ecological VE, the VE initiator will also consider the environmental criteria, in addition to the general supplier selection criteria such as price, quantity, quality and lead time. The environmental criteria may include factors such as environmental management, green image, green product and pollution control. The complete set of selection criteria, including the environmental criteria, are categorised into quantitative or qualitative criteria. The formation of ecological VE is then divided into two stages, that is, candidate supplier selection based on qualitative criteria, and ultimate supplier selection based on quantitative criteria. A simplified example is introduced to illustrate and justify the proposed ontological approaches and intelligent agent platform.