Multi-agent-based coordination in supply chain management

Based on the concept and requirements of supply chain management in manufacturing enterprises, this paper emphasizes the importance of coordination in supply chain and introduces relative researches. On the basis of the multi-agent theory and its analysis method in distributed artificial intelligence, the paper presents a supply chain management framework, defines the agents' functions and responsibility and studies the contents, features and solutions of coordinated supply chain. Finally, the paper presents the software architecture to develop a coordination environment based on CORBA and KQML protocols.