Flexible behaviours for emergent process interoperability

The dynamic, volatile nature of many contemporary markets means that business opportunities are frequently fleeting. For many, successful leverage of these increasingly depends upon an ability to draw upon networks of partners having complementary skills and expertise; and thus establish ad hoc virtual organisations (VOs). Traditional VO formation derives from a top-down decomposition of the top-level goal, followed by a recruitment of members to implement individual process steps. This approach equates a company with a set of single fixed processes. We argue that this both limits the possibility of finding innovative solutions by restricting the behaviour of the companies; and makes the consideration of political matters problematic. The approach proposed here aims to address these challenges through innovative use of agent technology, allowing process interoperability to emerge as a result of shared interests and complementary expertise of individual agents. Allowing a decomposition of the business opportunity into subprocesses to emerge from the interactions of the agents providing such processes means that agents can decide when and if to participate. This also foster more creative solutions, for instance, an agent may customise its processes for an especially attractive business opportunity. Finally, the approach allows agents to take direct account of political aspects, such as with whom they will work, before offering to contribute towards a virtual organisation. © 2006 IEEE.