LAUSR

Abstract This research addresses distributed decisions for dynamic partnership reformation to enhance fairness and efficiency among collaborative networked enterprises (CNEs). The aim of this research is to investigate a new sharing protocol (SP) to control CNEs. Most CNE studies are designed under a centralized SP. However, centralized SPs appear to be unfeasible or inadequate due to enterprises’ operating environments and local objectives; therefore, each CNE requires a distributed decision-making mechanism. Furthermore, market globalization and competition necessitate rapid responses to market changes and give rise to two major concerns about CNEs: (1) how can collaborations be rendered re-configurable to dynamically capture and adapt to market patterns; and (2) how can the resources of all CNEs be utilized fairly among enterprises, ensuring mutual benefits? Therefore, Dynamic-Distributed Sharing Protocol ( D 2 S P ), which is inspired by the principles of Collaborative Control Theory and Contract Net Protocol, is proposed to address these concerns. The performance of D 2 S P is evaluated by comparing with (1) static-centralized SP, (2) static-distributed SP, and (3) dynamic-centralized SP. The experimental results show that D 2 S P performs at least equally or better than centralized and static SPs in terms of total profit, fairness, scalability, and communication overhead.