Title: Implementing enterprise collaboration using web services and software agents

Authors: Akbar Siami Namin, Weiming Shen, Hamada Ghenniwa

Addresses: Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Institute, National Research Council Canada, London, Ontario, Canada. ' Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Institute, National Research Council Canada, London, Ontario, Canada. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada

Abstract: Global competition has forced manufacturing enterprises to collaborate towards fulfilling market demands and satisfying customers. A major challenge in implementing enterprise collaboration is on the integration of heterogeneous hardware and software platforms. This paper proposes to implement enterprise collaborations by employing web services and software agents. It presents a multi-layer architecture for enterprises| software infrastructure capable of accomplishing the necessary functionalities in typical collaborations such as resource discovery, workflow coordination, request analyses, tasks assignment and monitoring. In addition, this paper proposes an agent-based multi-layer structure for service discovery to improve the functionality and efficiency of resource discovery.

Keywords: service-oriented computing; web services; software agents; enterprise collaboration; virtual enterprise; agent-based systems; multi-agent systems; resource discovery; workflow coordination; request analysis; task assignment; monitoring; small and medium enterprises; manufacturing SMEs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNVO.2006.009534

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2006 Vol.3 No.2, pp.185 - 201

Published online: 19 Apr 2006 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article