An Approach to Efficient Waste Management for SMEs via RBVOs

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Businesses are aware of the popular demand for careful waste management as a high priority environmental issue. Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) face greater pressure when coping with waste products, because they often lack necessary resources or expertise. E-business could offer unique opportunities both for SMEs wanting to dispose of their waste or find waste management services and for SMEs who deal with specific aspects of waste disposal itself. This chapter proposes an approach for locating actors involved in the transportation, disposal, recycling and reuse of waste created by SMEs. Our approach incorporates the notion of Request Based Virtual Organizations (RBVOs) using a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and an ontology for the definition of waste management requirements. The populated ontology is utilized by a Multi-Agent System which performs negotiations and forms RBVOs. This approach enables SMEs to find appropriate partners, handle waste management and gain competitive advantage in the marketplace.