Commitments for agent-based supply chain management

As supply chain networks are becoming more and more global, process coordination must be considered a crucial point for successful business management. The need for a suitable management and communication framework is thus becoming evident. We already have some examples showing that information sharing is a key-point at certain levels of a supply chain network. As there are several analogies between a company in a business network and an agent, the Multi-Agent System paradigm can be a valid approach for modelling supply chain networks. We consider commitment as a concept that underlies the whole multi-agent environment, that is, an interagent state, reflecting a business relation between two companies that make themselves represented by software agents. We present a data structure for commitments that can be used in the agent-based communication framework for the management of a supply chain. Business partnership between companies leads to the creation of a "channel" through which we can identify three different kinds of flow (products, money and information). We show how commitments that deal with these flows are related to one another and how they can affect the supply chain.