A virtual enterprise design method based on business process simulation

In order for a virtual enterprise (VE) to be successful, effective synchronisation of processes between the member enterprises is a major challenge. To overcome this challenge, it is important to select appropriate member enterprises at the establishment phase of a VE that can cope with the business goal and constraints. In this paper, we propose a simulation-based method to evaluate and select proper candidate enterprises from a repository. A broker enterprise after designing a business process provides corresponding business requirements (abstract) to the candidates in the repository, and those candidate enterprises that meet the business requirements respond to the broker. The broker enterprise then simulates the business process (global simulation) considering global performance of the VE, whose results become detailed requirements for the candidate enterprises. The participating enterprises adjust their business conditions using their local simulation to cope with the business constraints. If the candidate enterprise cannot cope with the business constraints, a new candidate is selected from the repository, and the business process is simulated again. This procedure continues until an appropriate candidate is identified, and a virtual enterprise is then established. To support the proposed VE design process, OMG's Model Driven Architecture and the web services technology are employed. Finally, the proposed methods are conceptually illustrated for an exemplary VE.