AN INTELLIGENT AGENT-BASED ORDER PLANNING FOR DYNAMIC NETWORKED ENTERPRISES

摘要

There is currently an increasing interest in exploring the opportunities for competitive advantage that can be gained by reinforcing core competencies and innovative capabilities through networks of industrial and business partners. This paper firstly identifies some of the gaps that exist within current information systems that claim to support eBusiness and eWork in networked enterprises and describes some of the general requirements of distributed and decentralised information systems for companies operating in networks. It goes on to cover some principles for the design of a distributed IS providing an advanced infrastructure to support general co-operation, particular methodologies for co-operative and collaborative planning and guidelines for network set-up and support. The present work is one of the areas currently being delivered as part of the European IST consortium called Co-OPERATE. A distributed and decentralised information system, based on an architecture of agents and extensively using the internet, is being designed and implemented as a means to provide new and more powerful decision support tools for networked enterprises.