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.