The partners in a virtual manufacturing organization readily incline to reduce their efforts for worrying about loses resulted from uncertainties, which might result in various conflicts among partners. It is imperative for a virtual manufacturing organization to design an effective conflict management mechanism in order to maintain the stability of cooperation relationship. Based on the analysis of the complex interaction of integrated workflow in virtual manufacturing, an extensive conflict management mechanism (ECMM) was proposed for dynamically coordinating the partners. This ECMM transforms various conflicts into the basic one between cost and expected profit of each partner, which significantly simplifies the conflicts management process in practice. In order to support the ECMM, a distributed information system with an integrated database was designed for the regionally distributed partners. The solution logic of the system expresses the logical connection of several main functions, such as the dynamic cost planning/audit, partner’s attributes, conflict analysis and solution, and profits sharing management. It is the toughest challenge in development of the information system to embed some artificial techniques into the solution logic.
Protocol-Based Cooperation in a Virtual Manufacturing Organization