Integration of Web services and agents for supply chain system collaboration

Effective supply chain system collaboration is critical to integrate different business applications in order to provide rapid market responsiveness. This paper proposes a method to make Web services active and convenient in support of interaction and collaboration throughout a supply chain through synergizing a variety of state-of-the-art technologies such as agents and Web services. A conceptual model that defines the mappings between business processes, workflow, and information services is described. An integrated architecture and approach is proposed for the realization of timely collaboration in a supply chain system.