Partner Selection in Virtual Enterprises by Using Ant Colony Optimization in Combination with the Analytical Hierarchy Process

Within the scope of the collaborative research centre “Non-hierarchical regional production networks” at Chemnitz University of Technology, a virtual enterprise model is developed. This is based on very small performance units the competence cells (CCs). The precondition of the efficient and thereby competitive operation of those networks is a network controlling for objectively selecting the best suitable CCs for every order. This problem gains complexity because the manufacture of a product can be carried through in different ways. The central task within the network consists in guaranteeing the best possible realization of an order. First of all, a customer offer has to be generated to the competence cell network and the necessary CCs for the processing of the several partial performances within an order have to be selected. Thereby, a difficult economical decision problem arises for the network management. An elemen-