Paolo Renna - Böcker

The manufacturing industry is facing the challenges of shifting its operations from the traditional factory integration philosophy to a supply chain based e-factory philosophy, and of transforming the focus of companies from the local factory to global enterprise and business. Innovative Tools for Business Coalitions in B2B Applications presents a set of innovative methodologies that can be used to face all the issues that stem from the interaction of customers and suppliers in an e-marketplace environment.The first methodology discussed is multi-agent architecture and this forms the basis of a simulation environment developed in order to test the proposed models. The second concerns a bargaining model based on the negotiation mechanism and the third centers on production planning to support agents during the bargaining phase. The fourth is the possibility of a coalition between the suppliers and the authors offer a choice of two different approaches. One is the application of Nash equilibrium to select the members of a potential coalition of sellers, while the other is a centralized approach with a profit sharing mechanism based on the Shapley value. All the innovative approaches reported in Innovative Tools for Business Coalitions in B2B Applications have been statistically tested in different market conditions.The methodologies, approaches and results presented in Innovative Tools for Business Coalitions in B2B Applications will be of interest to PhD students, operations managers and supply chain management researchers who develop value-added services for an e-marketplace in a business-to-business environment.

The “extended enterprise” is a new emerging paradigm in the manufacturing arena. Indeed, global competition is pushing manufacturing enterprises in several industries either to split geographically the production capacity or to work together in supply chain organizations involving several independent entities. This dynamic is involving both big companies, whose organisation is always more and more decentralised and geographically distributed, and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that are embracing new organisation forms such as the Virtual Enterprise (VE) one. The “extended enterprise” allows gaining agility, reactive ness, even p- activeness, and, of course, efficiency in the highly dynamic markets of the mass customisation and knowledge based economy era. However, the “extended enterprise” paradigm scales management complexity both at the strategic and operational level up. This requires new tools for managing the complexity of the extended enterprise. The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enables the possibility to create new and innovative “tools for managing the extended enterprise”. This book addresses the above introduced issue of the tools for the extended enterprise. More specifically, it presents the results of a research developed under a two years program titled “ “Distributed process and production planning in manufacturing enterprise networks” and funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) under the program PRIN2001.

This book presents innovative methodologies that can be used to resolve issues raised by the interaction of customers and suppliers in an e-marketplace environment. The presented methodologies have been statistically tested in different market conditions.

Distributed production networks are organizational structures considered able to meet the agility and efficiency necessary to compete in the global market. Performances of such organizations depends on the ability of network actors in coordinating their activities. There are two approaches for managing complex distributed production networks: a centralized approach, or a decentralized approach. This book addresses production planning problems in distributed manufacturing networks from strategic, tactical, organisational and operative perspectives. New methodologies for capacity negotiation, allocation and workload assignment are presented. Long, medium and short-term problems are focused on. The proposed approaches are based on negotiation algorithms in multi-agent networks and are compared with classical centralised approaches in order to understand the effectiveness and efficiency of these approaches. This book will interest production network managers and enterprise resource planning vendors.

Distributed production networks are organizational structures considered able to meet the agility and efficiency necessary to compete in the global market. Performances of such organizations depends on the ability of network actors in coordinating their activities. There are two approaches for managing complex distributed production networks: a centralized approach, or a decentralized approach. This book addresses production planning problems in distributed manufacturing networks from strategic, tactical, organisational and operative perspectives. New methodologies for capacity negotiation, allocation and workload assignment are presented. Long, medium and short-term problems are focused on. The proposed approaches are based on negotiation algorithms in multi-agent networks and are compared with classical centralised approaches in order to understand the effectiveness and efficiency of these approaches. This book will interest production network managers and enterprise resource planning vendors.