Mobile Computing and Auto-ID Technologies in Supply Chain Event Management - An Agent-Based Approach

This paper presents the architecture of an agent-based system for Supply Chain Event Management. Auto-ID (= Automatic Identification), mobile and agent technologies are combined within this agentbased system called CoS.MA (Cooperative and Ubiquitous Supply-Network Monitoring Agents) in order to realize permanent tracking & tracing of resources (e.g. products, vehicles) in supply networks and to visualize resource-related key performance measures. Potentials and challenges in realizing supply networks by means of such technologies are discussed. CoS.MA is based on a peer-topeer network architecture. Each member (node) of a supply network will be represented by one CoS.MA agent platform. Mobile agents may migrate between those agent platforms to integrate and to visualize distributed data. An overview of existing agent-based prototypes in Supply Chain Event Management is given to show the state-of-the-art in this emerging research area.