Extended enterprise resource planning: conceptual approach using multiagent systems

Globalization and mass-customization is shaping a new kind of e-business for manufacturing and service organizations alike. Enterprises are strongly conditioned by unpredictable changes in the markets. The raising question is how to provide efficient, cost-effective and customer-oriented solutions on time. In fact, current systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) do not provide adequate facilities for addressing this problem. This paper conceptualizes how multiplatform integration may contribute to the evolving new phenomenon, i.e. global enterprise resource planning (GERP) systems. We are talking about perspectives of merging multi-agent approach with the ERP and SCM platforms, where communication framework is facilitated by the field-based model adopted from the recent advances in the robotics research. Intuitive reasoning behind it is based upon behavior of complex social networks, where are prevailing not pair-to-pair interactions among agents, but rather field-like medium for the effective information exchange. The paper examines each approach consequently and gives some clues how merging of different approaches may contribute to the achievement of better communication results for GERP.