A Bilateral Multi-Attribute Negotiation-Based Approach for a VE Configuration

In this paper, a specific case faced during the process of a Virtual Enterprise (VE) configuration from the Virtual Breeding Environment (VBE), for a specific Business Opportunity (BO), was studied. The considered case deals with the existence of a unique qualified partner in the VBE with a specific competence required by an activity of the BO at hand. This partner may behave opportunistically, taking advantage of being the only competent VBE member to achieve an activity, influencing, then, the effectiveness of the VE configuration. This paper proposed the integration of a bilateral multi-attribute negotiation process in the partner selection mechanism to improve the unique competent partner proposal and the development of a negotiation process-based concession. During negotiation, automated agents, representing the broker and the unique partner, exchange proposals and counter-proposals to reach a mutual agreement. Then, the accepted proposal is integrated into the Multi-Objective Programming model to complete the partner selection and order allocation mechanism. A real case study from a network in textile sector was presented to prove the contribution of the development and the integration of the negotiation process in the partner selection decision-making mechanism. The performance evaluation shows that integrating negotiation in the decision-making mechanism improves the VE objectives and performances.