PRIME Toolbox

Abstract

PRIME project aims in modeling, creating and evaluation of a Virtual Business Environment (VBE) for learning the entire life cycle of products and processes for all involved stakeholders and for gaining practical experience in strategic manufacturing through serious gaming. The game model of PRIME represents a complex set of business processes modeled on real-life processes in industrial enterprises. The business processes are prioritized by their importance regarding strategic manufacturing and are described by sequences of decisions. For example, the Make-or-Buy decision is a complex one that is equally important (or have same priority) to the less complex Protecting Innovations/R&D decision. The Toolbox created in the PRIME project is intended to provide means for content management of the VBE. These means are supposed to be used by the game mentors, moderators and administrators. For this purpose, the tool uses a server API which has interfaces for accessing all VBE objects. The source code of the Toolbox is written in Java programming language. The PRIME conceptual model includes four user roles, which can be grouped concerning two aspects: • Real and artificial users (only players) • System and end users (only real users) End users System users (Moderators and VBE Administrators) Real end users are players - they play the game and manipulate game world through exposable Graphical User Interface (GUI) provided by the PRIME client. Artificial end users are Artificial Stakeholders - intelligent agents operating either as competitors to the players or as cooperative partners. System users (both real and artificial) are actually Moderators (Mentors) and they monitor the game and players activities. They are capable to manage the VBE.