The holonic enterprise: modeling holarchies as MAS to enable global collaboration

We propose an e-business model, the holonic enterprise (HE) which integrates several paradigms (holonics, MAS, virtual enterprise, Web-centric enterprise and co-opetition) that have emerged as a result of the tremendous shift in the business dynamics on the global market enabled by the Internet and communication network technologies. The fundamental differences between holons and agents are addressed and the main challenges of the HE model implementation briefly stated, as they are commonly addressed by several collaborative research consortia. An innovative solution to automatic clustering of MAS (multi-agent systems) into holarchies by fuzzy entropy minimization and our efforts to integrate it with an evolutionary search for the best partners concludes the paper.