Agent-Based Enterprise Integration and Supply Chain Management

The Supply Chain of a manufacturing enterprise is the worldwide network of suppliers, factories, warehouses, distribution centers, and retailers through which raw materials are acquired, transformed and delivered to customers. This chapter reviews selected projects in agent-based enterprise integration and supply chain management. The Integrated Supply Chain Management Systems agents model and reason explicitly with respect to one another and their environment, and use artificial intelligence techniques to plan how to move from the current state of the world to a desired state. There are two primary categories of agents: service agents and special agents. The service agents are to facilitate agent collaboration and are of three types: Agent Name Server; Broker Agent; and Gateway Agent. The agent system architecture is supported by the agent communication infrastructure called JACKAL developed by the consortium. Agent-oriented techniques can be used to design and implement the information processing part of a holon.