Usage of Agent Technology to Coordinate Data Exchange in the Extended Enterprise

Abstract

In the current competitive and interconnected market place, manufacturing organizations are exploring varied forms of collaboration in order to sustain the creation of wealth. The Extended Enterprise is one of the proposed paradigms to facilitate collaboration among individual business units. Such a paradigm mainly claims that core capabilities are to be shared by participating firms, and exploited by the new, extended enterprise. In this setting, it is pivotal to store, advertise, and share capabilities that are offered and required by firms in the joint organization. The authors claim that merging EXPRESS data models, Business Processes and agent technology, innovative systems for coordinating data sharing along the networked enterprise are constructed. EXPRESS data models permit the unambiguous representation of core capabilities. Therefore, STEP-based repositories are built to store and retrieve information about them. Also, agent communication protocols, obtained after defining suitable Business Processes, are modelled and implemented to coordinate the flow of data. The validation is performed by a MAS in charge of sharing and exchanging data in a distributed setting.