Dynamic E-Supply Chain Integration – A Knowledge-Based Decision and Coordination Framework

摘要

With e-business emerging as a key enabler to drive supply chains, the focus of supply chain management has been shifted from production efficiency to customer-driven and partnership synchronization approaches. Such approaches depend on the match between the requirements and offerings that deliver the services. It can be ensured by separating requirements from the means of realization as well as dynamically assigning available resources to requests. To achieve this, we need coordinate the flow of information among the services and link their business processes under various constraints. The problem is complicated as a result of undetermined requirements of individual services and unpredictable solutions contributed by individual service providers. This paper examines an agent-mediated and knowledge-based decision and coordination approach to dynamic supply chain integration in a web-based environment. Each agent works as a broker for each service, exploring individual service decisions as well as interacting with each other by knowledge creating and sharing for achieving compatibility and coherence among the decisions of all services. Based on the approach, a prototype is implemented with simulated experiments highlighting the effectiveness of the approach.