Multi Agent Systems in Logistics: A Literature and State-of-the-art Review

Based on a literature survey, we aim to answer our main question: “How should we plan and execute logistics in supply chains that aim to meet today’s requirements, and how can we support such planning and execution using IT?†Today’s requirements in supply chains include inter-organizational collaboration and more responsive and tailored supply to meet specific demand. Enterprise systems fall short in meeting these requirements The focus of planning and execution systems should move towards an inter-enterprise and event-driven mode. Inter-organizational systems may support planning going from supporting information exchange and henceforth enable synchronized planning within the organizations towards the capability to do network planning based on available information throughout the network. We provide a framework for planning systems, constituting a rich landscape of possible configurations, where the centralized and fully decentralized approaches are two extremes. We define and discuss agent based systems and in particular multi agent systems (MAS). We emphasize the issue of the role of MAS coordination architectures, and then explain that transportation is, next to production, an important domain in which MAS can and actually are applied. However, implementation is not widespread and some implementation issues are explored. In this manner, we conclude that planning problems in transportation have characteristics that comply with the specific capabilities of agent systems. In particular, these systems are capable to deal with inter-organizational and event-driven planning settings, hence meeting today’s requirements in supply chain planning and execution.supply chain;MAS;multi agent systems

E-Procurement – Process Based Conceptual Model

This paper aims to contribute to the development of a process based conceptual model of electronic procurement. Model is based on three basic eprocurement processes – strategic, tactical and operational eprocurement. Processes are divided into phases which are supported by applications (i.e. software programmes). Apart from applications supporting basic procurement activities there is a currently fast growing group of ADM (Analytical - Decision support - Management) applications, which brings business benefits especially in complex procurement environments. The basic view is that of ICT’s (Information and Communication Technologies - namely Internet, Internet technologies, Internet standards, Internet applications) support of procurement activities. Paper presents integrated e-procurement applications and also various integration requirements of e-procurement applications. Model may perhaps help enterprises, which are new to e-procurement, e.g. SMEs, to gain basic understanding of which applications may be used for implementation of eprocurement processes

Architecture of an ERP System Supporting Project-Oriented Management

Abstract. Existing ERP systems provide an IT solution to the management of enterprise resources based on the function-oriented management approach. With an increasingly wide adoption of the project-oriented management, new models are needed for ERP systems to support the management of enterprise resources in a project-oriented manner. This paper presents an architecture of an ERP system supporting project-oriented management. Two characteristics of the project-oriented management are integrated in the proposed architecture: first, social protocols are used to model interactions between actors (humans or software agents) within a given group. Second, the concept of group actions is detailed as a way to integrate group dynamics to social protocols

Multi Agent Systems in Logistics: A Literature and State-of-the-art Review

Based on a literature survey, we aim to answer our main question: “How should we plan and execute logistics in supply chains that aim to meet today’s requirements, and how can we support such planning and execution using IT?” Today’s requirements in supply chains include inter-organizational collaboration and more responsive and tailored supply to meet specific demand. Enterprise systems fall short in meeting these requirements The focus of planning and execution systems should move towards an inter-enterprise and event-driven mode. Inter-organizational systems may support planning going from supporting information exchange and henceforth enable synchronized planning within the organizations towards the capability to do network planning based on available information throughout the network. We provide a framework for planning systems, constituting a rich landscape of possible configurations, where the centralized and fully decentralized approaches are two extremes. We define and discuss agent based systems and in particular multi agent systems (MAS). We emphasize the issue of the role of MAS coordination architectures, and then explain that transportation is, next to production, an important domain in which MAS can and actually are applied. However, implementation is not widespread and some implementation issues are explored. In this manner, we conclude that planning problems in transportation have characteristics that comply with the specific capabilities of agent systems. In particular, these systems are capable to deal with inter-organizational and event-driven planning settings, hence meeting today’s requirements in supply chain planning and execution

Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)

The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers

Trust Management For A Decentralized Service Exposure Marketplace: A Service Exposure Perspective

Enabling trust between entities to collaborate, without the necessity of a third-party mediator is a challenging problem. This problem is highlighted when the collaboration involves a complicated process, spans multiple systems, and encompasses a large number of entities. This is the case in a decentralized service exposure marketplace. In this work, we design and implement a \ac{PoC} suite of services to enable a blockchain to become the anchor of trust for a decentralized service exposure marketplace. We first formalize the necessary requirements to enable trust between a consortium of entities hosting the marketplace. We then follow with a threat model against the identified requirement, highlighting misbehaviour from the different entities. Finally, we propose a model, Trust Engine, which facilitates the trust management process and mitigates the identified threats. We showcase a proof-of-concept of our model, utilizing a combination of smart contracts (hyperledger fabric), blockchain, and service mesh technology (Istio). The Trust Engine successfully identifies the misbehaviour, documents it in the blockchain, and enforces polices to remediate the misbehaviour. Furthermore, we examined each component in our suggested system to identify the performance bottleneck. Lastly, we discuss the limitations of our suggested model with regards to other service mesh deployment models as well as potential future work and improvements

Privatising Network Industries

privatization, regulation, competition, telecoms, electricity, gas, water, rail

An environment to support negotiation and contracting in collaborative networks

During the last years, manufacturing and service industries faced a global change in the production paradigm. They have to continuously adapt their operating principles in reaction to new business or collaboration opportunities, where a natural reaction is a shift to a new business paradigm with the creation of strategic alliances for product or services development, but also for innovative and emergent business services design. On one hand, the process of creating such alliances can be rather simple if organizations share the same geographical and cultural context. But on the other hand, considering different conditions, there might be a low success rate in the creation of successful consortia. One known reason for such low rate are the delays resulting from negotiations in the establishment of collaboration commitments, represented by contracts or agreements, which are crucial in the creation of such alliances. The collaborative networks discipline covers the study of networks of organizations specially when supported by computer networks. This thesis contributes with research in this field describing the creation process of virtual organizations, and proposing a negotiation support environment to help participants in the negotiation of the consortia creation process and in the co-design of new business services. A negotiation support environment is therefore proposed and described with its main requirements, adopted negotiation protocol, conceptual architecture, models, and software environment. To demonstrate the feasibility of the implementation of the proposed systems, a proof-ofconcept software prototype was implemented and tested using some specific scenarios. This thesis work has been validated adopting a methodology that includes: (i) validation in the research community; (ii) validation in a solar industry network; and (iii) validation by comparison analysis