@INPROCEEDINGS{gruenert2007proposal, author = {Andreas Gr\"{u}nert and Sven Kaffille and Guido Wirtz}, title = {A Proposal for a Decentralized Multi-Agent Architecture for Virtual Enterprises}, booktitle = {The Nineteenth International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE 2007)}, year = {2007}, abstract = {Today, enterprises need more flexibility than ever before, but classic companies often cannot meet this requirement. Therefore, a more flexible kind of enterprise evolved: The Virtual Enterprise. One reason why Virtual Enterprises are that flexible is their extensive use of IT. Yet, given the temporary character of Virtual Enterprises, existing software concepts are often not applicable. Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) may help to solve this problem. Actually, MAS based solutions have already been developed for diverse problems (mainly) of the Virtual Enterprise performance layer. However, a concept that allows cooperating agents to support the management of the complete life-cycle of a Virtual Enterprise, is still missing. This paper attends to that gap. It defines an agent supported Virtual Enterprise life-cycle and proposes an abstract architecture for organizing a virtual enterprise based on a structured, multi-layered organization of agents. In doing so, the infra-structure for the next steps, i.e. elaborating the detailed ontologies and protocols, is provided.}, }