PERSPECTIVES OF AGENT TECHNOLOGY IN E-PROCUREMENT

摘要

The procurement of goods and services in the industrial marketplaces for manufacturing industries usually involves complex decision making techniques. Many E-Procurement suites have been developed to make the Procurement process easy. However, there is still a need for incorporating efficient decision support techniques to make the procurement process a successful one. Intelligent agents or multi agent systems are designed among others, to assist buyers in making their purchase decisions. Many Web sites adopt agent technology, for example to speed up the search for lower priced products. Although agents contribution in facilitating the shopping process is recognizable there seems to be some limitations. This paper presents an early attempt to qualitatively investigate the extent to which intelligent agents assist users in an e-procurement process as well as the drawbacks of this system.