An agent-based model for analyzing the impact of business interoperability on the performance of cooperative industrial networks

This paper presents an approach for analyzing the impact of business interoperability on the performance of cooperative industrial networks. The analysis of the impact is grounded on the agent-based simulation method. A theoretical agent-based model is proposed to simulate the manner in which companies interoperate in cooperative industrial networks and how the distance between the actual and the required level of business interoperability in different dyad relationships can affect the performance of these companies. To test the applicability of the proposed theoretical agent-based model, a case study regarding a dam construction project is presented. The objective of the case study is to analyze the impact of the introduction of a Radio Frequency Identification system and a cooperative information system platform, first on the business interoperability performance and then on the operational performance of a the companies involved in the dam construction project. The application of the theoretical agent-based simulation model to this case study supports our assumption that indeed, agent-based simulation is appropriate for achieving the objective set. Regarding to the case study results, the main benefits of the introduction of the cooperative information systems platform are the reduction of the time needed to analyze the slump and compression test results, which can be reduced up to 98%.