TY - JOUR
T1 - On-demand e-supply chain integration
T2 - A multi-agent constraint-based approach
AU - Wang, Minhong
AU - LIU, Jiming
AU - Wang, Huaiqing
AU - CHEUNG, Kwok Wai
AU - Xie, Xiaofeng
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by a RGC Central Allocation Group Research Grant (HKBU 2/03/C) from Hong Kong Government, and a Seed Funding for Basic Research (200611159216) from the University of Hong Kong. The author thank the editors and reviewers of Expert Systems with Applications, and Professor Kuldeep Kumar for their constructive comments on this paper.
PY - 2008/5
Y1 - 2008/5
N2 - With e-business emerging as a key enabler to drive supply chains, the focus of supply chain management has been shifted from production efficiency to customer-driven and partnership synchronization approaches. This strategic shift depends on the match between the demands and offerings that deliver the services. To achieve this, we need to 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 real-world situation is complicated as a result of undetermined requirements of services involved in the chain, unpredictable solutions contributed by service providers, and dynamic selection and aggregation of solutions to services. This paper examines an agent-mediated approach to on-demand e-business supply chain integration. Each agent works as a service broker, exploring individual service decisions as well as interacting with each other for achieving compatibility and coherence among the decisions of all services. Based on the framework, a prototype has been implemented with simulated experiments highlighting the effectiveness of the approach.
AB - With e-business emerging as a key enabler to drive supply chains, the focus of supply chain management has been shifted from production efficiency to customer-driven and partnership synchronization approaches. This strategic shift depends on the match between the demands and offerings that deliver the services. To achieve this, we need to 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 real-world situation is complicated as a result of undetermined requirements of services involved in the chain, unpredictable solutions contributed by service providers, and dynamic selection and aggregation of solutions to services. This paper examines an agent-mediated approach to on-demand e-business supply chain integration. Each agent works as a service broker, exploring individual service decisions as well as interacting with each other for achieving compatibility and coherence among the decisions of all services. Based on the framework, a prototype has been implemented with simulated experiments highlighting the effectiveness of the approach.
KW - Constraints management
KW - Electronic business
KW - Intelligent agents
KW - Supply chain integration
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=38649133139&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.eswa.2007.05.041
DO - 10.1016/j.eswa.2007.05.041
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:38649133139
SN - 0957-4174
VL - 34
SP - 2683
EP - 2692
JO - Expert Systems with Applications
JF - Expert Systems with Applications
IS - 4
ER -