An agent-based framework for supply chain cooperation

The importance of cooperation in the supply chain has led scholars to suggest diverse approaches for problems in the collaboration process. Cooperation refers to the integration of different parts of an organization or different organizations in supply chain to accomplish a collective set of tasks and to achieve mutual benefits. The use of modern information technology (IT) decision support systems is fast becoming an indispensable tool for designing and managing complex supply chain systems today. This study describes a model of intelligent framework for cooperation in the supply chain environment. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that agent technology can represent the supply chains by (a) reviewing intelligent agent applications for supply chain and (b) illustrating how a multi-agent system can provides a solution for supply chain cooperation. We review and synthesis existing applications in comparison to traditional and Internet-based technologies and critically evaluate agent technology applicability for supply chain management. This paper thus provides an intelligent framework for extended enterprise cooperation (i-SEEC) by adopting the techniques of the Semantic Web service and Multi-agents system. The proposed system can integrate different information technologies to make its behavior more intelligent and to catch more useful information from supply chain actors.