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Abstract:

The agent view provides a level of abstraction at which we envisage computational systems carrying out cooperative work by inter-operating globally across networks connecting people, organizations and machines. A major challenge in building such systems is coordinating the behavior of the individual agents to achieve the individual and shared goals of the participants. As part of a larger project targeted at developing an Agent Building Shell for multi-agent applications, we have designed and implemented a coordination language aimed at explicitly representing, applying and capturing coordination knowledge for multi-agent systems. The language provides KQML-based communication, an agent definition and execution environment, support for modeling interactions as multiple structured conversations among agents, rule-based approaches to conversation selection and execution, as well as an interactive tool for in context acquisition and debugging of cooperation knowledge. In the Integrated Supply Chain Management project we are seeking to apply the Agent Building Shell approach for manufacturing enterprises. As a part of the project a Supply Chain Demonstrator is designed and implemented. The paper presents the design and functioning of the demonstrator. 1.

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