Supply chain process and agent design for e-commerce

Supply chain management represents a critical competency in today's fast-paced, global business environment, but neither EDI nor Web-based supply chain applications can enable both the process integration and flexibility demanded in the business environment of today. In contrast, intelligent agents offer potential and capability for buyer-seller integration and flexibility, and early applications show great promise for supply chain integration through agent technology. However, agent technology remains relatively immature, and we have yet to establish, test and verify good design principles and techniques like those now well established for other, more conventional software technologies. The research described in this paper builds upon recent work on agent-based supply chain integration to propose a set of techniques and tools to integrate process and agent design for the supply chain in an e-commerce context. Preliminary results from implementation include successful development of a supply chain agent federation and demonstration of its effective performance in a socially-conforming manner along the supply chain. Implications of this work with respect to the e-commerce context include the potential for rapid agent development by end users themselves.