基于Agent面向软件重用的敏捷供应链模型

敏捷性和快速响应性是现代企业成功的关键因素，供应链管理正成为现代企业提高竞争力而采取的有效的先进手段，它要求敏捷化的信息系统支持，满足企业快速构造供应链的需要，因此，如何实现供应链系统的软件重用，就具有非常重要的现实意义，提出了将企业的商务逻辑与具体事务处理分开的思想，建立基于agent的敏捷化供应链管理模型，通过对商务逻辑的规则模型和软件代理的活动行为模型建立，利用ECA规则协调多代理系统的活动，从而有效地支持供应链动态建立，过程重组，增强供应链系统信息分布处理，软件可重用和规模可扩展能力。     

Agent-Based Systems for Intelligent Manufacturing: A State-of-the-Art Survey

Agent technology has been considered as an important approach for developing distributed intelligent manufacturing systems. A number of researchers have attempted to apply agent technology to manufacturing enterprise integration, supply chain management, manufacturing planning, scheduling and control, materials handling, and holonic manufacturing systems. This paper gives a brief survey of some related projects in this area, and discusses some key issues in developing agent-based manufacturing systems such as agent technology for enterprise integration and supply chain management, agent encapsulation, system architectures, dynamic system reconfiguration, learning, design and manufacturability assessments, distributed dynamic scheduling, integration of planning and scheduling, concurrent scheduling and execution, factory control structures, potential tools and standards for developing agent-based manufacturing systems. An extensive annotated bibliography is provided.     

Study of the performance of multi-behaviour agents for supply chain planning

In today's industrial context, competitiveness is closely associated to supply chain performance. Coordination between business units is essential to increase this performance, in order to produce and deliver products on time to customers, at a competitive price. While planning systems usually follow a single straightforward production planning process, this paper proposes that partners adapt together their local planning process (i.e. planning behaviours) to the different situations met in the supply chain environment. Because each partner can choose different behaviour and all behaviours will have an impact on the overall performance, it is difficult to know which is preferable for each partner to increase their performance. Using agent-based technology, simulation experiments have been undertaken to verify if multi-behaviour planning agents who can change planning behaviours to adapt to their environment can increase supply chain performance. These agents have been implemented in an agent-based planning platform, using a case study illustrating a lumber supply chain. The performance analysis shows that advanced planning systems can take advantage of using multiple planning processes, because of the dynamic context of supply chains.     

Development of a collaborative virtual maintenance environment with agent technology

This paper proposed a virtual environment with agent technology to facilitate the integration and cooperation of product maintenance process. The agent-based system framework, in which various intelligent agents worked together to perform product maintenance tasks in an autonomous and collaborative way, is addressed. The functional definition of each intelligent agent is presented and the agent internal structure is designed. Moreover, ontology-based agents communication mechanism and agents co-operation model are proposed, and an intelligent algorithm based on fuzzy comprehensive evaluation is designed to solve competition conflicts among the agents. Finally, the prototype system is developed and the algorithm is proved feasible and efficient.     

Product whole life-cycle and omni-channels data convergence oriented enterprise networks integration in a sensing environment

With the process of globalisation and the development of management models and information technologies, enterprise cooperation and collaboration meets a new business and technical environment. The Internet of things, mobile Internet, cloud computing and big data technologies build a sensing environment for all kinds of businesses. Inter enterprise collaboration is also meeting the new challenges of omni-channel marketing, closed-loop supply chain and enterprise networks integration. A data convergence oriented enterprise networks integration architecture with relative enabling technologies is developed in the paper. In order to collect, transfer and fuse data from different data sources, Data Portal (DP) and Collaboration Agent (CA) concepts are introduced, which present a lightweight and loosely coupled infrastructure for enterprise networks integration. How to use the developed technologies to solve problems of product lifecycle management and omni-channel marketing management are discussed in detailed cases studies.     

Implementation of intelligent systems, enabling integration of SMEs to high-value supply chain networks

In the face of increasing competition from low-cost economies, European manufacturing companies are focusing on optimisation of operational activities to remain competitive. Previous work has identified how companies can optimise implementation of specialist technology to improve production capability; however increasing demands in service requirements such as customisability and flexibility are often negating the localised gains in capability.Supply chain management has become an increasingly important aspect of operations improvement to ensure support throughout the product realisation process. The key to creating a supply chain capable of this rapid response and high level of adaptability is integration of intelligent systems and management capabilities.A site-visit-based survey and characterisation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), comprising actual or potential supply chain components, reveals that even those with well developed capabilities and attitudes to adopting production technologies are largely not proactive with technology adoption targeting these needs.A review of requirements for SMEs to achieve such competitive supply chain capabilities reveals a hierarchy of technical expertise to be developed. This is presented as an implementation strategy for staged introduction of these tools and techniques with a view to establishing high-value supply chains capable of withstanding business pressures from developing economies.     

Supporting decisions in real-time enterprises: autonomic supply chain systems

Supporting decisions in real time has been the subject of a number of research efforts. This paper reviews the technology and architecture necessary to create an autonomic supply chain for a real-time enterprise for supply chain systems. The technologies weaved together include knowledge-based event managers, intelligent agents, radio frequency identification (RFID), database and system integration, and enterprise resource planning systems. This article is part of the “Handbook on Decision Support Systems” edited by Frada Burstein and Clyde W. Holsapple (2008) Springer.     

Applications of agent-based systems in intelligent manufacturing: An updated review

Agent technology has been recognized as a promising paradigm for next generation manufacturing systems. Researchers have attempted to apply agent technology to manufacturing enterprise integration, enterprise collaboration (including supply chain management and virtual enterprises), manufacturing process planning and scheduling, shop floor control, and to holonic manufacturing as an implementation methodology. This paper provides an update review on the recent achievements in these areas, and discusses some key issues in implementing agent-based manufacturing systems such as agent encapsulation, agent organization, agent coordination and negotiation, system dynamics, learning, optimization, security and privacy, tools and standards.     

Agent技术研究现状及其在企业集成中的应用

1.引言分布式人工智能(DAI)的研究和网络化分布环境的普及推动了Agent的理论、技术,特别是多Agent的理论、技术的发展,因为它为分布开放系统的分析、设计和实现提供了一个崭新的途径。自从Minsky在1986年出版的“思维的社会”中提出Agent的概念后,智能代理技术随着计算机科学的发展     

Multi-behavior agent model for planning in supply chains: An application to the lumber industry

Recent economic and international threats to western industries have encouraged companies to increase their performance in all ways possible. Many look to deal quickly with disturbances, reduce inventory, and exchange information promptly throughout the supply chain. In other words they want to become more agile. To reach this objective it is critical for planning systems to present planning strategies adapted to the different contexts, to attain better performances. Due to consolidation, the development of integrated supply chains and the use of inter-organizational information systems have increased business interdependencies and in turn the need for increased collaboration to deal with disturbance in a synchronized way. Thus, agility and synchronization in supply chains are critical to maintain overall performance. In order to develop tools to increase the agility of the supply chain and to promote the collaborative management of such disturbances, agent-based technology takes advantage of the ability of agents to make autonomous decisions in a distributed network through the use of advanced collaboration mechanisms. Moreover, because of the highly instable and dynamic environment of today's supply chains, planning agents must handle multiple problem solving approaches. This paper proposes a Multi-behavior planning agent model using different planning strategies when decisions are supported by a distributed planning system. The implementation of this solution is realized through the FOR@C experimental agent-based platform, dedicated to supply chain planning for the lumber industry.     

Autonomic tracing of production processes with mobile and agent-based computing

Tracing items in a supply chain, across different enterprises and through the full processes scope, is today an inherently complex design task. Enterprises are typically comprised of hundreds of applications that are custom built at different times, acquired from third parties and parts of legacy systems, and also operating in multiple tiers of different manufacturing and information system platforms. Further, traceability is characterized by a goal-oriented approach, in which business-process analyses are driven by goal achievements rather than by systematic engineering processes. The use of a classical enterprise integration approach mostly needs tailoring to different applications. Due to the number and diversity of the systems and of their interactions, and to their dynamicity, it is difficult, costly, and therefore often not convenient to develop in large scale distributed systems.To overcome these issues, a supply chain traceability system with a high level of automation is discussed in this paper. In particular, the system adopts an agent-based approach, in which cooperative software agents find solutions to back-end tracing problems by self-organization. Such cooperative agents are based on a business process aware traceability model, and on a service-oriented composition paradigm. Furthermore, an interface agent assists each user to carry out the front-end tracking activities. Interface agents rely on the context-awareness paradigm to gain self-configurability and self-adaptation of the user interface, and on ubiquitous computing technology, i.e., mobile devices and radio-frequency identification, to perform agile and automatic lot identification. The paper comprises real-world experiences on the fashion supply chain.     

基于Multi-Agent的供应链系统模型及其仿真

针对具有复杂自适应特征的供应链系统,设计了一个基于multi-agent的制造业供应链系统仿真模型.该模型分别从企业主体层和业务流程层构建供应链系统的agent模型,通过各独立ageIlt之间的来实现系统从接到客户订单到交付产品的整个过程.通过将任务分解并引入合同网模型来建立制造商与供应商之间的高效协商机制.通过在swarm平台上的系统仿真实验表明,该模型可较好的反映供应链内部的运行状况,并有良好的测试效果和稳定性.     

Industrial application integration using the unification approach to agent-enabled semantic SOA

Within the enterprise, information infrastructure as the mean to bring together different software applications is the key component to enable cooperation and information and knowledge exchange in an open-distributed environment. The paper addresses the issues of industrial application integration in business processes using agent-enabled service-oriented architectures (SOA). In this paper, we show that agent-enabled SOA can play an important role for service integration. Our framework combines Web services (WS) and intelligent agent technologies orchestrated by a business process management system. This framework looks for unification of agent and WS service models, is grounded in a semantic SOA of an agent platform and is supported by the Component Agent Platform Over .NET Framework agent platform tools. We describe the architecture and illustrate the approach by an industrial application scenario from petroleum wells’ drilling.     

基于供应链的企业信息系统集成设计

企业信息系统集成的体系结构可以考虑从纵向和横向两个方面进行研究。以纵向的观点,在系统的开发设计过程中,结合系统工程与软件工程引入供应链的三链（决策链、支撑链、主链）并使其贯穿于系统开发设计过程的始终;以横向的观点,建立在供应链上的各企业的信息集成可以通过计算机协同工作、人工智能、数据库等技术实现,供应链上的每一个生产单元均是虚拟企业,它们均可以以计算机可以识别的信息进行描述与表示,企业的集成实际上就是这样一些信息企业内部及供应链上（企业之间）进行动态或静态的数据集成。同时,针对任务的转换与分解、智能体系设计、数据组织与管理体系设计等问题分别进行了相应的讨论。     

An intelligent agent-based architecture for strategic information system applications

Strategic information systems (SIS) focus on the use of information system (IS) and information technology (IT) in the strategic management process in business organizations. The emphasis is on the strategic view of IS and IT and their impact on organizational strategy. Increased competition and advances in information technologies push for considerable structural changes in SIS. Agents, as autonomous entities which either work on their own or cooperate with others, and agent architectures have enormous potentials to be applied in such critical systems. In this article, first we investigate the very fundamental concepts of strategic information systems and intelligent agent technology. Then, the discussion continues on the specification of the characteristics and implementation issues of a typical SIS. Afterwards, we make use of these concepts and integrate them into a state-of-the-art, intelligent architecture for strategic information systems, called intelligent agent-based SIS. This is a comprehensive framework for a SIS in IT era which may be put into practice by a team of professionals in the near future. The graphical representation of this model is intended to help the reader understand the concept much better. After explaining the suggested model in full details, we introduce some support agents and specify their corresponding roles in an intelligent agent-based SIS architecture. Discussions and concluding remarks regarding the proposed system are provided at the end of the paper.     

A collaborative food safety service agent architecture with alerts and trust

With the recent advances in Internet and mobile technologies, there are increasing demands for ubiquitous access to food safety information for service integration and gathering first hand information. However, due to disparate food trading information among different food suppliers throughout the food supply chain such as food importers, food wholesalers, food retailers, it is still difficult for citizens to use them effectively during their marketplace shopping. To overcome this problem, we propose a Collaborative Food Safety Agent System (CFSAS) based on a scalable, flexible, and intelligent Multi-Agent Information System (MAIS) architecture for proactive aids and trust-based decision support on food purchasing to citizens. We formulate our MAIS architecture for CFSAS further with agent clusters based on a case study of the Center for Food Safety (CFS) in Hong Kong. Agent clusters may comprise several types of agents to achieve the goals involved in the major processes of a food safety mechanism. We show how agents help citizens better plan, understand, and specify their preferences collaboratively with the CFSAS. We further illustrate how this can be implemented with Web service technologies to integrate disparate food information resources along the food supply chain.     

Managing Flexibility for Inter-Organizational Electronic Commerce

Electronic commerce has the potential to significantly impact on supply chain management in today's highly dynamic business environment. Enterprises are eager to tap into new opportunities such as the proliferation of alternatives in the electronic marketplace, real-time access to supply information including both product price and leadtime at virtually no cost, and an efficient inter-organizational electronic collaboration infrastructure. In our work, we model different business entities as software agents interconnected via the Internet. Our main research focus is how to coordinate supply chain management agents dynamically and flexibly such that goods and services can be delivered at the right time in a cost-effective manner.     

An agent-based service-oriented integration architecture for collaborative intelligent manufacturing

The rapidly changing needs and opportunities of today's global market require unprecedented levels of interoperability to integrate diverse information systems to share knowledge and collaborate among organizations. The combination of Web services and software agents provides a promising computing paradigm for efficient service selection and integration of inter-organizational business processes. This paper proposes an agent-based service-oriented integration architecture to leverage manufacturing scheduling services on a network of virtual enterprises. A unique property of this approach is that the scheduling process of an order is orchestrated on the Internet through the negotiation among agent-based Web services. A software prototype system has been implemented for inter-enterprise manufacturing resource sharing. It demonstrates how the proposed service-oriented integration architecture can be used to establish a collaborative environment that provides dynamic resource scheduling services.     

基于多智能agent的敏捷供应链

论述了敏捷供应链概念和特点,指出敏捷供应链是以动态联盟为基础的敏捷制造的关键技术之一。敏捷供应链作为一个典型的分布式系统,该文采用多智能agent系统建立敏捷供应链系统的框架,并对通用智能agent的结构、功能以及智能agent之间协作与通讯进行了研究。     

基于Agent的生产优化调度系统

生产调度过程是CIMS实施的关键部分，也是企业实现优化的核心。文章提出了一种基于Agent的智能优化调度系统，利用Agent把多种不同的优化调度方法结合在一起，实现不同的优化方法的互补，从而使企业的生产过程优化。