Abstract
Participating members in a manufacturing supply chain usually make use of an information system like enterprise resources planning (ERP) for planning and scheduling activities independently. Recent research indicates that there is a need to handle such distributed activities in an integrated manner, especially under uncertain and fast changing environments. A multiagent system, a branch of distributed artificial intelligence, is a contemporary modelling technique for a distributed system in the manufacturing domain. This distributed modelling technique is suitable for integrating supply chain networks, which have distributed entities within the system, and each of them makes decision locally, i.e. a local information system. By adopting a multiagent modelling technique, supply chain networks can be built efficiently based on an information system. However, with reference to the reported research, which involves distributed modelling of a supply chain, a higher level coordination mechanism is not specified. This paper aims to propose a framework that utilizes a multiagent system with a corresponding coordination mechanism dedicated to manufacturing supply chain networks.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 443-454 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture |
Volume | 218 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Apr 2004 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Coordination
- Decision making
- Distributed artificial intelligence
- Multiagent
- Supply chain network
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
- Mechanical Engineering