Agile Business Model in the Steel Product Industry Sector

Today´s success manufacturing paradigm is agility that emphasizes customer orientation, networking and the benefits of e-business. The new agile business model has set also new requirements for supporting ICT infrastructure. As the enterprises are forming dynamic networks and the products are changing in variety and volume, the supporting ICT infrastructure has to be flexible in order to work in heterogeneous application environment. This paper proposes an agent-based solution to support agile business model in manufacturing business network. The paper describes a SteelNet case study in which a business network has used agent-based solution to support the new business model. The case study also introduces the implementation and testing processes of SteelNet system