FIRST STEPS OF JAVA-BASED SIMULATION FOR DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM OF BUSINESS COMPANIES

The motivation of this paper was to model and to implement an innovative approach to simulate the trading processes of a virtual business company. Agent-based methods together with the Java development platform are used to implement a multi-agent system to serve as a simulation framework. The framework should be a basic part of a decision support system operating in the integration with real system of a company (e.g. ERP system) to investigate and to predict chosen business metrics of a company. This will ensure the management of a company to work with the simulation possibilities of this framework and to support their decision-making processes. The paper firstly introduces some of the existing theories about consumer behavior and the types of factors influencing it. Secondly, characterizes multi-agent model of a virtual company, the agents participating in the trading processes, and the production function. Finaly, the simulation results and their validation are described. To conclude, the proposed approach to the simulation of trading processes in an agent-based model could properly contribute to better decision-making process.