A framework for developing an agent-based collaborative service-support system in a manufacturing information network

A framework for the development of a collaborative service-support system, which is an object-based tool designed to provide a service to the manufacturing firms within an enterprise information network, is presented here. The service is carried out by virtual agents (VAs), which are software programs designed to accomplish specific tasks, just like 'real' human agents with specialized skills. This proposed system is equipped with the 'push delivery' feature, which automatically directs updated information straight to the user without having to be requested every time. The new feature of this collaborative service-support system is the incorporation of the task-management system, which is characterized by the combined capabilities of a rule-based inference mechanism and the object-oriented technology, in order to achieve the decomposition of a job into individual tasks that are to be automatically undertaken by the relevant virtual agents. The virtual agents can act cooperatively and collaboratively, to achieve the given goal, under the control of a task-control subsystem. This proposed service-support system enables the easy accessing and use of accurate and updated manufacturing information on the network, and therefore enhances the organizational productivity of the companies involved. In this paper, the detailed architecture and the components included in the proposed system are described. © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.