Abstract
To support the complex coordination activities involved in supply chain management, more and more companies have autonomous software agents acting on their behalf. Due to confidentiality concerns, such as hiding sensitive information from competitors, agents typically only have a local view on the supply chain. In many situations, however, companies would like to expand the view of their agents to share valuable information such as transportation tracking and service delays. Non of the participating companies, however, has enough knowledge or authority to realize such interactions in a controlled manner.
In this paper, we present an organization middleware that offers a collaboration platform and enables agents to interact across the boundary of local interactions. Policies and laws enable companies to define the scope of interactions of their agents and the restrictions on their exposed information. Using Alloy, we formally define the relation between the interactions offered by the middleware, the exposed information and the provided policies and laws. This allows us to guarantee a number properties which are of particular interest to companies using the middleware.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Dignum, V.: Handbook of Research on Multi-Agent Systems: Semantics and Dynamics of Organizational Models. Information Science Reference (2009)
Esteva, M., Rosell, B., Rodriguez-Aguilar, J., Arcos, J.: Ameli: An Agent-Based Middleware for Electronic Institutions. In: AAMAS 2004, pp. 236–243. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2004)
Ferber, J., Michel, F., Baez, J.: AGRE: Integrating environments with organizations. In: Weyns, D., Van Dyke Parunak, H., Michel, F. (eds.) E4MAS 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3374, pp. 48–56. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Garcia-Camino, A., Noriega, P., Rodrguez-Aguilar, J.: Implementing norms in electronic institutions. In: AAMAS 2005, pp. 667–673. ACM Press, New York (2005)
Grefen, P., Aberer, K., Hoffner, Y., Ludwig, H.: CrossFlow: Cross-organizational workflow management in dynamic virtual enterprises. Computer Systems Science and Engineering 15(5), 277–290 (2000)
Grossi, D., Dignum, F., Dignum, V., Dastani, M., Royakkers, L.: Structural aspects of the evaluation of agent organizations. In: Noriega, P., Vázquez-Salceda, J., Boella, G., Boissier, O., Dignum, V., Fornara, N., Matson, E. (eds.) COIN 2006. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4386, pp. 3–18. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Hübner, J.F., Boissier, O., Kitio, R., Ricci, A.: Instrumenting Multi-Agent Organisations with Organisational Artifacts and Agents. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 1–32
Jackson, D.: Software Abstractions: logic, language, and analysis. The MIT Press, Cambridge (2006)
Jennings, N.R.: On agent-based software engineering. Artificial Intelligence 177(2), 277–296 (2000)
Minsky, N., Ungureanu, V.: Law-Governed Interaction: A Coordination and Control Mechanism for Heterogeneous Distributed Systems. ACM TOSEMÂ 9(3) (2000)
Omicini, A., Ricci, A.: Reasoning about organisation: Shaping the infrastructure. AI* IA Notizie 16(2), 7–16 (2003)
Omicini, A., Ricci, A., Viroli, M.: Artifacts in the A&A Meta-Model for Multi-Agent Systems. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 17(3), 432–456 (2008)
Preist, C., Esplugas-Cuadrado, J., Battle, S., Grimm, S., Williams, S.: Automated business-to-business integration of a logistics supply chain using semantic web services technology. In: Gil, Y., Motta, E., Benjamins, V.R., Musen, M.A. (eds.) ISWC 2005. LNCS, vol. 3729, pp. 987–1001. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Stadtler, H.: Supply chain management and advanced planning: basics, overview and challenges. European Journal of Operational Research 163(3), 575–588 (2005)
Stefansson, G.: Business-to-business data sharing: A source for integration of supply chains. International Journal of Production Economics 75(1-2), 135–146 (2002)
Van Den Broek, E., Jonker, C., Sharpanskykh, A., Treur, J., Yolum, P.: Formal modeling and analysis of organizations. In: Boissier, O., Padget, J., Dignum, V., Lindemann, G., Matson, E., Ossowski, S., Sichman, J.S., Vázquez-Salceda, J. (eds.) ANIREM 2005 and OOOP 2005. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3913, pp. 18–34. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Weyns, D., Haesevoets, R., Helleboogh, A., Holvoet: The macodo organization model for context-driven dynamic agent organzations. ACM Transaction on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems 6(4) (2010)
Weyns, D., Haesevoets, R., Helleboogh, A., Holvoet, T., Joosen, W.: The MACODO Middleware for Context-Driven Dynamic Agent Organzations. ACM Transaction on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems 5(1), 3:1–3:29 (2010)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Haesevoets, R., Weyns, D., Cruz Torres, M.H., Helleboogh, A., Holvoet, T., Joosen, W. (2011). A Middleware Model in Alloy for Supply Chain-Wide Agent Interactions. In: Weyns, D., Gleizes, MP. (eds) Agent-Oriented Software Engineering XI. AOSE 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6788. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22636-6_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22636-6_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-22635-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-22636-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)