april 29-30, 2001swarmfest, santa fe1. april 29-30, 2001swarmfest, santa fe2

April 29-30, 2001 SwarmFest, Santa Fe 1

Pietro Terna [email protected]

University of Torino - Italy, Department of Economics and Finance “G.Prato”

jVEFrame: a Virtual Enterprise Frame in Swarm

Abstract.

jVEFrame (Java Virtual Enterprise Frame, written in Swarm) is built to simulatethe effects of deep modifications that may occur in the life of a firm - forexample, the adoption of B2B and B2C strategies - and to investigate the role ofknowledge into this kind of economic organizations.


The jVEFrame structure is highly decentralized: the “orders”, i.e. electronic forms(objects in Swarm contest), contain all the information needed for production.There is one order for each product to be done; it reports its production recipe, theperformed phases, the cost accounting etc.

The production units that execute the orders may be a part of the simulatedenterprise or even be structured as external bodies.

The model can also be used to evaluate the relations between the adoptedinformation management systems (i.e., P2P knowledge management) and thebehavior of the enterprises.

In a more theoretical perspective, the model represents a step toward thesimulation of the interactions among and within enterprises, to search for a betterdefinition of entrepreneurship, in the Austrian economic sense of discovering newfields of innovation.


Our products are sequences of numbers!

1-22-1328-7-27-7...

Product “1-2” requires the production phases 1 and 2; “28-7-27-7” requires …

Each production phase represents a step in the process of producing a good or a service using goods or services

running the jVE production


1-22-1328-7-27-7...

market Enterprise front end

units

our jVE enterprise(a sub-swarm of

units)

FE

28

7

27

A system of enterprises and micro productive units

(a swarm)

FE

recipes


28-7-27-7

units

FE

28

7

27

FE

7? ?

a

a, a random order with a random recipe

b

c

The orders are placedin the unit waiting lists and executed in aFIFO way

x

then we have steps b, c, …;

in x we have a choice problem


28-7-27-7

units

FE

28

7

27

FE

7

Warehouses and inventories

?

?

??

? … how to decide?


http://eco83.econ.unito.it/~terna/ct-era/ct-era.html

The Environment Rules Agents (ERA) scheme


28-7-27-7

units

FE

28

7

27

FE

7

News

useful for …

technically: objects

Knowledge management and information diffusion

? ?

????

? Sending or not the news: a problem of cooperation, routines, agreements, … (the core of organization problems)

a micro–unit

a macro–unit


The swarm of swarm technique allows us to consider macro–units containing a complete jVE …

and to simulate the effect of information diffusion linking directly the macro–units or the micro ones …

so a jVE macro–unit may work on the basis of the news produced by a micro–unit operating within another jVE or by

another macro–unit


Hierarchies, knowledge management and P2P perspective ...

GartnerConsultingThe Emergence of Distributed Content Management and Peer- to-Peer Content Networks

http://marketplacena.gartner.com/010022501oth-NextPage.pdf


28-7-27-7

units

FE

28

712134

73

...

Exploding recipes to consider deeply sub–procurement problems

28-121-34-…-73-7-27-7

Procurement


Accounting capabilities

… environmental accounting

28-7-27-7

units

FE

28

7

27

FE

7? ?

cost accounting on the unit side

cost accounting on the order side

differences ?


•The “no-inventories” case …and the effects on the length of the waiting lists

•The “inventories” case: waiting lists and financial costs

•The diffusion of news that influence decisions about inventories: different effects on financial costs (not yet implemented)

A closer look to the jVEFrame model


without inventories


with inventories


Time

0 50 100 150 200

1.0

1.2

1.4

1.6

1.8

Ratios with WarehousesRatios without Warehouses

Total Production Time vs. Total Recipe Length


3 matrixes (unexpressed, emerging, operating in background, …)

from/to

Units 1 2 3 … N 123…N

flows of

• goods and services

• information

• hierarchies


The enterprises (unexpressed) knowledge

What unexpressed knowledge is? The tacit, unarticulated, nonscientific knowledge of the decision-makers

With jVEFrame we can build models on it, in actual enterprises, and simulate the effects of changes like B2B or B2C or P2P knowledge management etc.


Emerging innovation

in recipes ...1 311 1217 7 ...

# of any length in recipes of any length

• new # in recipes as new production phases or components

• new recipes as sequences of new and old #

• to renew units and spatial organization in a productive supply chain

(# as components in recipes)

with JVEFrame we can also make the attempt of modeling the emergence of innovation


units

FE

28

7

27

FE

7? ?

From …


… to …

28

7

27

FE

7

with the emergence of new units, new jVEs and a new space organization

… local networks of enterprises or industrial districts


The primary objective of the National Industrial Information Infrastructure Protocols (NIIIP) Consortium is to develop, demonstrate, and transfer into widespread use the technology to enable Industrial Virtual Enterprises. A Virtual Enterprise is a temporary organization of companies that come together to share costs and skills to address business opportunities that they could not undertake individually. Industrial Virtual Enterprises, with NIIIP technology, foster collaborative efforts and the sharing of engineering and manufacturing information.

www.niiip.org

A small project (jVEFrame) and a big one (NIIIP)


Introduction of space, distances, transportation and logistic problems

Creation of Gantt charts for the simulated activities

Forthcoming practical improvements in jVEFrame


Luis Garicano (2000), Hierarchies and the Organization of Knowledgein Production, Journal of Political Economy, vol. 108, no. 5

Organizations exist, to a large extent, to solve coordination problems in the presence of specialization. As Hayek (1945, p. 520) pointed out, each individual is able to acquire knowledge about a narrow range of problems. Coordinating this disparate knowledge, deciding who learns what, and matching the problems confronted with those who can solve them are some of the most prominent issues with which economic organization must deal.

Hayek, Friedrich A. von. “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” A.E.R. 35(September 1945): 519–30.

The theoretical side ...


Coase R. (1937), The nature of the firm, Economica, 4, pp. 386-405.

Chamberlin E.H. (1933), The Theory of Monopolistic Competition,Cambridge (Ma.), Harvard University Press.

Kirzner I. (1997), Entrepreneurial discovery and the competitivemarket process: an Austrian approach, Journal of Economic Literature,vol.XXXV, n.1, pp. 60-85.

A theoretical journey with agent based simulation and jVEFrame: from Chamberlin and Coase to Kirzner, via the Hayek’s work.

v. Hayek F. (1948), Individualism and Economic Order, London,University of Chicago Press.


If the Austrian theory claims that entrepreneurial discovery can account for a tendency toward equilibrium, that vague-sounding term “tendency toward” is used deliberately, advisedly, and quite precisely.

Such a tendency does exist at each and every moment, in the sense that earlier entrepreneurial errors have created profit opportunities which provide the incentives for entrepreneurial corrective decisions to be made. These incentives offer rewards to those who can better anticipate precisely those changes in supply and demand conditions which we have seen to be so disconcertingly possible.

What our understanding of the entrepreneurial discovery process provides, is not conviction that an unerringly equilibrative process is at all times in progress, but rather appreciation for the economic forces which continually encourage such equilibrative movement.

Conclusions (… borrowed from Kirzner’s paper)

april 29-30, 2001swarmfest, santa fe1. april 29-30, 2001swarmfest, santa fe2

Documents

santa fe28

santa fehttp

santa fehierarchies

santa fepietro

santa fe1

santa fethe jveframe

production phases

p2p knowledge management