Dynamic supply chain integration through intelligent agents

Abstract

The success of supply chains depends on the match between the requirements and offerings that deliver the services. It can be ensured by separating requirements from the means of realization as well as dynamically assigning available resources to requests. To achieve this, we need coordinate the flow of information among the services and link their business processes under various constraints. Existing approaches to this problem have relied on complete information of services and resources, and have failed to adequately address the dynamics and uncertainties of the operating environments. The problem is complicated as a result of undetermined requirements of decomposed individual services and unpredictable solutions contributed by service providers. This paper examines an agent-mediated coordination approach to dynamic supply chain integration. Each agent works as a broker for each service involved in the chain, exploring service requests as well as identifying suitable resources for achieving compatibility and coherence among the decisions of individual services. Based on the approach, a prototype has been implemented with simulated experiments highlighting the effectiveness of the approach. © 2007 IEEE.