Multiple Agents-Enabled Systems Coalition for Integrated Manufacturing Processes and Supply Chain Management for Steel Industry

Most business negotiation in supply chain and information exchange in manufacturing processes are heavily human-involved. The processes of negotiation and information exchange are usually time consuming and unreliable. Software agents have been increasingly explored to improve the information flow and the decision-making process. In order to use agents in manufacturing applications, a software agentenabled process integration framework for manufacturing and supply chain management has been developed and is described in this paper. The framework includes agent architectures, interaction protocols, message exchanges, an ontological engineering environment, business rules and knowledge bases, and databases. The initial implementation of the framework has been tested by a prototype multi-agent system in a steel product business network and a manufacturing network. Further evolvement of the frameworks to other industries is expected.