An Agent-Based Architecture for Suply Chain Management

In process of SCM, the information is distributed and heterogeneous in nature. And the decisions are often optimized locally but do not assure a global optimization for the whole supply chain. To address these problems, an agent-based architecture has been developed which viewed SCM as consisted of flows and agents two objects. And the agents were classified into structural and functional agents to represent the entities and activities in SCM. In the architecture, the KQML has been used to realize the coordination among the agents. To illustrate the architecture, a SWARM-based simulation work has been proposed and the results implied that the architecture provides a very efficient platform to design and optimize the supply chain, and in cost saving, improve order processing, shorten lead-time, and improve customer satisfaction has played a very important role