Title: Orchestration support for request management in collaborative company networks

Authors: Heiko Thimm, Karsten Boye Rasmussen

Addresses: School of Engineering, Pforzheim University, Tiefenbronner Str. 66, 75175 Pforzheim, Germany. ' Department of Management and Marketing, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense, Denmark

Abstract: Small and medium-sized companies benefit from participation in collaborative networks that allow the companies in symbiotic collaboration to perform tasks that would be out of reach for any single company. An inquiry to the network has to be orchestrated into a virtual organisation where each of the selected companies delivers products and services directed towards the fulfilment of the request. The orchestration is performed by a moderator who faces the challenge to select members for a configuration (network actor set) that constitutes the |best fit| to an obtained inquiry. The |fit| is determined by complicated constraints. These constraints refer to the multitude of different conditions and preferences relevant to orchestrating a virtual organisation including factors of the given inquiry, the offerings and preferences of the single companies and also the economic and collaboration history of the whole network. This paper describes the basic algorithmic design of an IT solution that acts as decision support for the moderator of company networks.

Keywords: company networks; collaborative networks; decision support; virtual organisations; collaborative business; orchestration; company selection; moderators; virtual enterprise; small and medium-sized enterprises; SMEs; request management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2009.028044

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2009 Vol.36 No.3/4, pp.200 - 207

Published online: 02 Sep 2009 *

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