AgentNet

The comprehensive planning and control in supply chains is intended to reduce inventories, shorten lead times and better coordinate unplanned events. Such planning and control requires the integration of the production stages and the corresponding production structures. In heterogeneous production structures, as they occur in hybrid supply chains in the transition from process to general cargo production, there are particular deficits in the coordination of production stages at the operational level.

In the research project AgentNet, an agent-oriented concept for the design of order-related information flows in supply chains with hybrid production structures was developed. The aim was to eliminate the current deficits in order coordination at the operational level. A reference model was applied in two companies in order to check the system behaviour, to determine potential benefits from the design and to demonstrate the functionality of the agent-oriented model.