A simulation approach to assess partners selected for a collaborative network

Manufacturing enterprises are increasingly more aware of the importance of establishing collaborative relationships with their network partners, due to the advantages associated to collaboration. Nevertheless, the participation in a collaborative network (CN) comes with associated challenges, namely the need to reduce the potential for conflicts among partners. A CN consists of heterogeneous partners, each one defining its own objectives and activating its own strategies. In this context, the ability to quickly identify partners with aligned strategies is crucial for smooth operation of the CN. The main aim of this paper is to address the partners’ selection problem in the context of Virtual organizations Breeding Environments (VBE) that facilitate and enable the creation of Virtual Organisations (VO), as one type of CN. In a first stage, the sets of enterprises, characterised by having the required competencies to create the VO, are identified among different potential candidates within the VBE. In a second stage, the strategies alignment approach, based on the system dynamics simulation method, is used for the partners’ selection process, identifying the best set of enterprises. In this paper, the final stage of partners’ selection process is addressed by obtaining the degree of alignment of the business strategies formulated by each set of enterprises. In the light of this, a system dynamics-simulation model, in AnyLogic, is presented to obtain the set of enterprises that have higher levels of alignment in its strategies. The proposed system dynamics-simulation model is applied to a case in the building industry, to deal with the partners’ selection problem in a VBE with the aim of forming a stable and sustainable VO.