An agent-based framework for global purchasing and manufacturing in a shoe industry

Global competition is forcing the present day industry to produce high quality product more fast and inexpensively. The need for fast information exchange has increased among the remote locations for the cooperation and coordination. In this study, a virtual global manufacturing system in a shoe company is constructed that distributes production schedule among remote places, acts as a bridge between the headquarters and manufacturing plants, distributes tasks and collates different solutions between demand and supply using an agent. It generates an order and a procurement plan. An order-supply agent is proposed and implemented to automate the process of ordering and supplying of goods in a shoe making company from the Internet environment.