824 E-Commerce Agents and Payment Systems offers. This disadvantage is resolved by Auction- Bot, which is a general-purpose Internet auction server. AGENTics is another agent prototype, ZKLFK GHYHORSV ZKDW LV UHIHUUHG WR DV ³online catalog integration for e-commerce.”AGENTics products shield the user from the technicalities RI³ZKHUH´DQG³KRZ´WKHLQIRUPDWLRQZDV gathered, while synthesizing many information pieces into a coherent whole (Mougayar, 1997). Some agents can select desired items based on preferences, search databases to look for selected pieces of information, and conduct transactions. An example of such adaptive agent is the SAFER architecture for e-commerce. SAFER is a Web-based distributed infra- structure to serve agents to query, buy, and sell goods in e-commerce and establishes necessary mechanisms to transport, manufacture, and evolve all different types of agents. The goal of SAFER is to construct open, dynamic, and evolutionary agent systems for e-commerce (Zhu & Guan, 2000). There will be SAFER-compliant and non- compliant communities coexisting in the whole e-commerce network. Each SAFER community consists of several mandatory components: owner, butler, agent, agent factory, community adminis- tration center, agent charger, agent immigration, clearinghouse, and bank. Agent community is the basic unit in SAFER e-commerce, which offers virtual regions and vehicles to host and adminis- trate mobile agents during roaming, transaction, and evolution. An owner is in charge of all his or her agents, and making respective authorizations to mobile agents and his or her agent butler, which is a 24-hour online watcher who would handle most of the tasks on behalf of the owner. When agents are sent out roaming in the network, the butler has the responsibility of keeping track of agents activities and locations by sending and receiving messages with agents. At least one ¿QDQFLDOLQVWLWXWLRQXVXDOO\DEDQNZKLFKFDQ link all value-representation to real money, must also be involved. The payment scheme designed IRU6$)(5LVH[SHFWHGWRIXO¿OOÀH[LELOLW\DQG interoperability, which means diverse representa- tions of value will have the possibility to emerge in one framework for users’ convenience. Given that, it is important that funds represented by one mechanism be easily converted into funds represented by others (Neuman & Medvinsky, 1995). DESCRIPTION OF E-PAYMENT SCHEME The payment module in the agent-mediated SAFER e-commerce architecture must contain several essential components: the market place, agents (including mobile agents, static agents, and DJHQWEXWOHUV¿QDQFLDOLQVWLWXWLRQVDQGXVHUV,Q SAFER, a community will offer virtual regions, factories, administration tools, vehicles to ma- nipulate and administrate mobile agents during any activity and provide security so that users can trust it. Different types of agents fabricated by an agent factory of SAFER are running under the payment scheme for respective functions and WDVNV7KH\DUHEULHÀ\GHVFULEHGLQ)LJXUH ,QWKLVVFKHPHDVXEV\VWHPFDOOHG³DJHQF\´ LVPHQWLRQHG6LPLODUWRWKHGH¿QLWLRQJLYHQE\ Dr. Larry Kerschberg in his DPSC project (Ker- schberg & Banerjee, 1997), an agency can be thought as a multilayered agent group or a federa- WLRQRIDJHQWVZLWKVSHFL¿FJRDODQGIXQFWLRQDO role in the architecture. It is also like a collection of cooperating intelligent agents with particular expertise. If the owner is interested in some items, he will assign tasks to his or her butler and agents. The agent butler will then send out information agents from agency, taking note of the items of interest, and set parameters such as due date (by which the item should be purchased), desired price, and highest acceptable price. The information agents XVHGWRVLIW¿OWHUDQGSURFHVVLQIRUPDWLRQZLOO 825 E-Commerce Agents and Payment Systems roam in SAFER or even non-SAFER communi- ties under a certain transport protocol, which is explained in the paper (Guan & Yang, 1999). I t c a n h e l p w i t h d o z e n s o f p u r c h a s i n g d e c i s i o n s DQGWKXVORZHUWKHFRVWDQGJDLQJUHDWHI¿FLHQF\ While roaming, agents are well tracked by the agent butler, by sending messages to report their activities and locations, which is described in detail in Zhu, Guan, and Ko (2000). After gath- ering enough information, the information agent forward all to the strategy agency, which will analyze the new data and settle down for deci- sion for the user. All the recommendations will EHUHSRUWHGWRWKHDJHQWEXWOHULQWKH¿UVWKDQG Once a recommendation has been reported, the agent butler activates the negotiation agency, which will send out negotiation agents to the VKRUWOLVWPHUFKDQWKRVWV1HJRWLDWLRQLVGH¿QHG DV IROORZV ³QHJRWLDWLRQ LV WKH FRPPXQLFDWLRQ process of a group of agents in order to reach a mutually accepted agreement on some matter” (Green, 1997, p. 21). If the negotiation agent and the receptionist agent reach an agreement, the UHVXOWZLOOEHUHSRUWHGWRWKHEXWOHULQWKH¿UVW KDQG7KHEXWOHUZLOOLQIRUPWKH¿QDQFLDODJHQF\ to initiate the contract for certain goods and make Figure 1. Cooperating agents for the SAFER payment scheme Owner Host Bu y er Side Report to the Agent butler Financial Institutions Bank and Clearin g S y stems Strategy Agency Sending out information agents for information collectin g Information Agency (Messages) Financial Agency Conduct Big Payment (Messa g es) Execution A g enc y Agent Butler Conduct Small Payment (Messages) Negotiation Agency Sending out Negotiation agents Owner Monitoring Alerting Decision- Making Other Owner Hosts In SAFER 826 E-Commerce Agents and Payment Systems a transaction decision, according to the amount of money involved, the distance from host to the destination vendor, and so forth. Financial agents will take charge of the goods reception and pay- ment transaction under the authorization of the butler. They communicate with the merchant host, autonomously make payment request, and sign contract order against the right good. Implementation The implementation of SAFER is under way. The overall architecture consists of several closely related but separate modules: roaming module, evolution module, fabrication module, negotiation module, and electronic payment module. The implementation of the payment module began with the development of the agent butler, ZKLFK LV GH¿QHG DV D FRPELQDWLRQ RI VHYHUDO separate functions, as is shown in Figure 2. They are authorization manager, e-payment coordina- tor, transport assistant, heartbeat monitor, agent tracer, and evolution coordinator. In the e-payment coordinator module, com- munication channels are set up between agent butler and all agencies of diverse functionalities, each of which is running in a separate thread. User interfaces are designed so that the user can DVVLJQWDVNVGH¿QHQHHGVDQGUHTXLUHPHQWVFKHFN records, and read alerting messages reported by his or her agent butler. Making all types of agents and merchant hosts DYDLODEOHWR¿W LQ WKH VDPHIUDPHZRUN ZLOO EH GLI¿FXOWLQ WKHFXUUHQW UHVHDUFK VWDJH EHFDXVH the attributes that agents require to communicate may differ. Given that, we have chosen to imple- ment a limited number of typical agents to test the system functionality, and will consider how the work could be generalized to e-commerce in the future. IMPACT OF SAFER-BASED PAYMENT SYSTEMS The payment system proposed in this chapter is agent based and built for the SAFER e-com- merce architecture. As such, in compliance with the SAFER architecture, this system provides a ÀH[LEOH DQG VHFXUH ¿QDQFLDO LQIUDVWUXFWXUH IRU Internet commerce. The payment module contains several essential components to manipulate and administer the mobile agents while providing security to the users. Figure 2. Prototype of agent butler A g ent Butler Agent Tracer Heartbeat Monitor E-Payment Coordinators Authorization Manager Evolution Coordinator Transport Assistant 827 E-Commerce Agents and Payment Systems CONCLUSION The agent-based SAFER e-commerce payment scheme incorporated agent technologies and took advantage of some well-known secure payment transaction protocols. It aims to simulate and even enhance physical cash and is designed to support a multitude of currency types. By incorporating the concepts of agent, the system is expected to SURYLGHVHFXULW\HI¿FLHQF\ÀH[LELOLW\DXWRQRP\ and intelligence. It is designed to provide ano- nymity against other parties, and audit ability (traceability) for the owner (or agent butler). At last, a number of potential improvements, practical aspects, and some open issues have been identi- ¿HGIRUIXWXUHZRUN REFERENCES Asokan, N., & Janson, P. A. (1997). The State of the art in electronic payment systems. Computer Volume, 30(9), 28-35. Baek, J. M., & Hong, I S. (2003). A study on mobile payment system with united mileage us- ing USIM. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2713, 394-403. Bradshaw, J. (1997). Software agent. AAAI Press. Figure 3. Payment coordinator Strategy Agency Information Agency Financial and Execution Agency Negotiation Agency User Interface A g ent Butler Pa y ment Coordinator Brands, S. (1995). Electronic cash on the Internet. Proceedings of the Symposium on Network and Distributed System Security, (pp. 64-84). Chavz, A., & Maes, P. (1996). Kashbah: An agent marketplace for buying and selling goods. First International Conference on the Practical Ap- plication of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology, London. Ng, C. H., Guan, S U., & Zhu, F. (2002). Virtual marketplace for agent-based electronic com- merce. In S. Nansi (Ed.), Architectural issues of Web-enabled electronic business (pp. 303-320). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing. Dahab, R., & Ferreira, L. C. (1998, December 7-11). A scheme for analizing electronic pay- ment systems. Proceedings of the 14 th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, Phoenix, AZ. Green, S. (1997). Software agents: A review [IAG technical report]. Trinity College. Guan, S U., Zhu, F., & Maung, M. T. (2004). A factory-based approach to support e-commerce agent fabrication. Electronic Commerce and Research Applications, 3(1), 39-53. Guan, S U., & Yang, Y. (1999, December 15-17). SAFE: Secure-roaming agent for e-commerce. Proceedings of the 26 th International Confer- 828 E-Commerce Agents and Payment Systems ence on Computers & Industrial Engineering, Melbourne, Australia. Guan, S U., & Hua, F. (2003). A multi-agent architecture for electronic payment. International Journal of Information Technology and Decision Making, 2(3), 497-522. Guan, S U., & Yang, Y. (2004). Secure agent data integrity shield. Electronic Commerce and Research Applications 3(3), 311-326. Guan, S U., & Zhu, F. (2002). Agent fabrica- tion and its implementation for agent-based electronic commerce. International Journal of Information Technology and Decision Making, 1(3), 473-489. He, M., Jennings, N. R., & Leung, H. F. (2003). On agent-mediated electronic commerce. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineer- ing, 15(4). Kerschberg, L., & Banerjee, S. (1997). The DPSC electronic marketspace: The impact of intelligent agents, the Internet and the Web on electronic com- merce and logistics. Retrieved from http://cise. krl.gmu.edu/KRG/DPSCAgentHTML_folder/ DPSCAgent.html Khu-Smith, V., & Mitchell, C. J. (2002). Using EMV-cards to protect e-commerce transactions. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2455, 388- 399. Mjolsnes, S. F., & Michelsen, R. (1997). CAFÉ. Open transnational system for digital currency payment. Proceedings of the 30 th Hawaii Inter- national Conference on System Sciences (Vol. 5, pp. 198-207). Mougayar, W. (1997). The future of agent-based commerce on the Web. Retrieved from http://www. cyberm.com/cyber/art2.htm Neuman, B. C., & Medvinsky, G. (1995, March 5-9). Requirements for network payment: The NetCheque™ perspective. Proceedings of IEEE Compcon’95, San Francisco. Sherif, M. H., & Serhrouchni, A. (1998). SET and SSL: Electronic payments on the Internet. Proceedings of the Third IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications, ISCC ’98 (pp. 353-358). Zhu, F. M., Guan, S U., Yang, Y., & Ko, C. C. (2000). SAFER e-commerce: Secure agent fabri- cation, evolution, and roaming for e-commerce. In M. R. Syed & R. J. Bignall (Eds.), Internet com- merce and software agents: cases, technologies and opportunities (pp. 190-206). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing. KEY TERMS Adaptability: The ease with which software VDWLV¿HV GLIIHULQJ V\VWHP FRQVWUDLQWV DQG XVHU needs. Agents: A piece of software that acts to ac- complish tasks on behalf of its user. Anonymity: The degree to which a software system or component allows for or supports anonymous transactions. Client: ,QWKLVDUWLFOH³FOLHQW´UHIHUVWRFXV- tomers who pay for good and services. &RQ¿GHQWLDOLW\ The nonoccurrence of the unauthorized disclosure of information. Cryptography: The art of protecting infor- mation by transforming it (encrypting it) into an unreadable format, called cipher text. Only those who possess a secret key can decipher (or decrypt) the message into plain text. Flexibility: The ease with which a system or FRPSRQHQWFDQEHPRGL¿HGIRUXVHLQDSSOLFDWLRQV or environments other than those for which it was VSHFL¿FDOO\GHVLJQHG This work was previously published in Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Volume 1, edited by M. Khosrow- Pour, pp. 93-97, copyright 2005 by Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global). 829 Copyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Chapter 3.11 Applications of Agent-Based Technology as Coordination and Cooperation in the Supply Chain Based E-Business Golenur Begum Huq University of Western Sydney, Australia Robyn Lawson University of Western Sydney, Australia ABSTRACT This chapter explores the utilization of a multi- DJHQWV\VWHPLQWKH¿HOGRIVXSSO\FKDLQPDQ- agement for electronic business. It investigates the coordination and cooperation processes, and proposes and discusses a newly developed model for an enhanced and effective cooperation process for e-business. The contribution made by this re- search provides a theoretical solution and model for agents that adopt the enhanced strategy for e-business. Both large organizations and SMEs ZLOO EHQH¿WE\ LQFUHDVLQJ DQG H[SDQGLQJ WKHLU businesses globally, and by participating and sharing with business partners to achieve com- mon goals. As a consequence, the organizations LQYROYHGZLOOHDFKHDUQPRUHSUR¿W INTRODUCTION Today’s Internet-connected world has created an enormous revolution among business orga- nizations. Nowadays, running a global busi- ness electronically is one of the most important emerging issues. Many researchers and software developers have been investigating and develop- ing software tools and mechanisms that allow others to build distributed systems with greater ease and reliability for conducting e-business. When a computer system acts on our behalf, it needs to interact with another computer system that represents the interests of another party, and these interests are generally not the same. In this FRQWH[W:RROGULGJHVSHFL¿HV 830 Applications of Agent-Based Technology as Coordination and Cooperation It becomes necessary to endow such systems with the ability to cooperate and reach agreements with the other systems, in much the same way that we cooperate and reach agreements with others in everyday life. This type of capability was not studied in computer science until very recently. (p. 3) Traditional purchasing and selling for busi- ness-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) have been conducted through different complex processes involving negotiation, as well as cooperation and coordination. It was quickly realized that e-commerce represents a natural, and potentially very lucrative, application domain for multi-agent systems. $UWL¿FLDOLQWHOOLJHQFH$, has been largely focused on the issues of intel- ligence in individuals, but surely a large part of what makes us unique as a species is our social ability. Not only can we communicate with one another in high-level languages, we can cooper- ate, coordinate, and negotiate with one another. As many species have a strong social ability (e.g., birds) like this, we also need cooperation and coordination in multi-agent systems to conduct fruitful, successful, and sustainable e-business. It has been found that cooperation and co- ordination are important issues in conducting e-business. In recent years, there have been many research studies in e-business negotiation, but there is little work in e-business negotiation through cooperation and coordination. For ex- ample, large organizations mostly have enough products to sell. On the other hand, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that are suffering from a lack of capital cannot compete with large organizations. However, some SMEs want to purchase products from large organizations and sell them to their customers. Another example is supply chain management (SCM) where at each and every stage (for instance, procurement of material, transformation of material to inter- PHGLDWHDQG¿QLVKHGJRRGVDQGGLVWULEXWLRQRI ¿QLVKHGSURGXFWVWRFXVWRPHUVFRRSHUDWLRQDQG coordination are needed. In these cases, they can cooperate with each other by exchanging products, and a deal between them can be made EHFDXVHERWKSDUWLFLSDQWVDUHDEOHWR³¿QHWXQH´ WKHLUSUR¿W7KDWPHDQVWKH\FDQZRUNWRJHWKHU to achieve particular goals. Therefore, if we can perform this type of activ- ity electronically, it will be easier and faster, and, at the same time, very complex issues can be avoided. To perform these activities electronically using a cooperation and coordination process, models QHHGWREHLQYHVWLJDWHGIRUSHUIRUPLQJÀH[LEOHDQG reliable tasks. Many different disciplines includ- ing sociology, political science, computer science, management science, economics, psychology, and system theory are dealing with fundamental questions about coordination in one way or an- other. Furthermore, several previous writers have suggested that theories about coordination are likely to be important for designing cooperative work tools (Finnie, Berker, & Sun, 2004; Holt, 1988; Winogard & Flores, 1986). Therefore, it is possible to develop computer-supported coop- erative work with the prospect of drawing on a much richer body of existing and future work in the application of multi-agents in supply chain based e-business. The main objective of this chapter is to explore the operation of a multi-agent system in supply chain management for electronic business. It focuses on the coordination and cooperation pro- cesses, and discusses a newly developed model for an enhanced and effective cooperation process for e-business. The main contribution of this re- search is a theoretical solution and the model for agents that adopt this strategy for their e-business transactions. Both large organizations and SMEs ZLOOEHQH¿WDV WKHVWUDWHJ\ ZLOO HQKDQFHWKHLU global business by participating and sharing with other businesses to achieve common goals. As a consequence, the organizations involved will be PRUHSUR¿WDEOHDQGFRPSHWLWLYH 7KH FKDSWHU LV RUJDQL]HG DV IROORZV ¿UVW factors in conducting e-business are discussed. 831 Applications of Agent-Based Technology as Coordination and Cooperation Then agent-based technology is outlined as a multi-agent system that is necessary for a supply FKDLQV\VWHP$GH¿QLWLRQWKHRU\RIFRRUGLQDWLRQ is introduced, and some related work on coordina- tion and cooperation is reviewed. The next section discusses cooperative problem-solving processes. Then a theoretical model and architecture on coordination and cooperation is explained in the context of trading agent competition supply chain management (TAC/SCM). The concluding section provides an overview of the chapter. FACTORS IN CONDUCTING E-BUSINESS 7KH IROORZLQJ IDFWRUV KDYH EHHQ LGHQWL¿HG LQ conducting e-business: General Problems • Finances: It has been found that some SMEs do not have enough resources to conduct e-business; however, they are particularly interested in being involved. Therefore, large organizations and SMEs have a good opportunity to work together to conduct global e-business. • Price war: When a buyer seeks goods through an Internet catalogue, for various reasons, the price of some products are too cheap, while others are too expensive. As a result, customers feel a level of confusion about making the right decision. • Postpurchase/local customer service: It has also been found that if somebody buys goods from the Internet, the company may not have a local retailer in that city. In this case, if any problem is found with the goods, postpurchase/local customer service becomes a complex issue to solve. As a re- sult, some customers are not interested in buying goods from the Internet. Therefore, currently, local retailers need to stock simi- lar goods. Moreover, to conduct e-business globally, many retailers need to participate. For that reason, cooperation is required for transactions with large organizations and with SMEs. • Lack of a pricing strategy: I n t h e r e a l w o r l d, a pricing strategy is an important issue. To develop an effective pricing strategy, some- times an incentive like a discount is needed. This is possible when a manager thinks its time to give a discount via a special promo- tion or to clear old stock. It is also possible to implement a pricing strategy in the online world. • Lack of customer satisfaction: From the above points, customers can feel dissatis- ¿HG Problems in Supply Chain Management • Lack of information sharing: Information VKDULQJLVRQHRIWKHPRVWVLJQL¿FDQWLVVXHV in SCM and plays an important role. As for example, a retailer such as K-Mart may place huge orders for a particular product for their planned promotion. If suppliers had prior knowledge of this promotion, they also could plan for a production increase. • Lack of information access limitation and lack of transparency: At times, users DUHXQDEOHWR¿QGDQH[DFWRXWFRPHGXHWR restricted access to some information. This results in a lack of transparency. As a result, it obstructs making the right decision within the right time frame. • /DFNRIVKDULQJWKHEHQH¿WVRIFRRUGLQD- tion equitably:7KHFRRUGLQDWLRQEHQH¿WV are not being shared equitably in the supply chain, which is a challenge (Chopra & Mei- ndl, 2003, p. 503). Consequently, if agents agree to work together, the problem can be resolve accordingly. 832 Applications of Agent-Based Technology as Coordination and Cooperation • Lack of agreement to work together: Agreements are not generally found in real-world SCM. This is due to one stage of the supply chain having objectives that FRQÀLFWZLWKRWKHUVWDJHVWKDWJHQHUDOO\KDYH different owners. For this reason, the main objective of each owner is to maximize its RZQSUR¿W$VDUHVXOWWKLVGLPLQLVKHVWKH RYHUDOOVXSSO\FKDLQSUR¿W7RGD\WKHVXSSO\ chain is comprised of potentially hundreds or even thousands of independently owned en- terprises. For instance, Ford Motor Company has thousands of suppliers from Goodyear WR0RWRUROD7RPDNHDQRYHUDOOSUR¿WIRU the supply chain, the partners need to reach an agreement for working together. This can OHDGWRWKHRYHUDOOSUR¿WEHLQJPD[LPL]HG Therefore, each participant in the coopera- WLYHYHQWXUHZLOOEHQH¿WDFFRUGLQJO\ • Lack of communication among business organizations/supply chains (level of product availability): Good communica- tion can yield good results. Companies in the supply chain often do not communicate through the various stages of the supply chain and are unwilling to share information. As a result, companies become frustrated with the lack of coordination. • Timely manner: Sometimes, some infor- mation is not accessible in a timely manner. Therefore, this can obstruct the right decision being made in a timely fashion. • Lack of use of technology to improve con- nectivity in the supply chain. • Lack of trust: Because of the above ob- stacles, trust is decreased and frustration appears at various stages of the supply chain, making coordination efforts much more GLI¿FXOW2QWKHRWKHUKDQGKLJKOHYHOVRI trust involve the belief that each stage is interested in the other’s welfare and would not take actions without considering the impact on the other stages. If the organizations work together electroni- cally towards some shared common goal, then WKHUHLVDSRVVLELOLW\ WKDWWKHSUREOHPVGH¿QHG above can be fully or partially overcome. %HQH¿WVRI&RQGXFWLQJE-Business 7KHIROORZLQJDUHWKHH[SHFWHGEHQH¿WVLQFRQ- ducting e-business when organizations work together: • 5HDVRQDEOHDQGÀH[LEOHSULFH If different organizations work together, they will be able to sell goods at a reasonable and leveled price. An e-business can easily alter the price of the products in one entry of the database, which is linked to its Web site. According to current inventories and demand, this type of ability allows an e-business to increase revenues by adjusting prices. Airline tickets are a good example where low-cost available WLFNHWVDUHVKRZQRQD:HEVLWHIRUÀLJKWV with unsold seats. This can reduce the price war between competitors. • Reliable product: By working together, it is also possible to sell reliable products to customers. • Globally available and less transporta- tion cost: Because organizations can work together globally, then the goods can also be available globally. For example, a cus- tomer in Thailand can place an order on the Internet. If there is a warehouse situated in Thailand for that item, then it is easier to get the item; otherwise the seller would need to ship the item. In the case of limited VWRFNLWPLJKWQRWEHSUR¿WDEOHWRKDYHDQ item available globally when there are high transportation costs. Consequently, by glob- ally working together, organizations can HDUQPRUHSUR¿WDQGORZHUWUDQVSRUWDWLRQ costs. • Reduce operational cost: Operating costs can also be decreased if a manufacturer is 833 Applications of Agent-Based Technology as Coordination and Cooperation using e-business to sell directly to customers, as there are fewer supply chain stages for the product as it makes its way to a customer. • Reduce delivery time: If a warehouse exists locally, then this will also lower the delivery time, in addition to delivery costs. • Enhanced customer service locally: If a problem arises for the product, then it can be serviced locally. As a result, a customer ZLOOIHHOPRUHFRQ¿GHQWLQEX\LQJIXUWKHU products. • Fewer inventories: E-business can reduce inventory levels and costs by improving supply chain coordination and creating a better match between supply and demand. For example, Amazon.com requires fewer inventories than local retail bookshops. As a result, e-business reduces inventory cost. • 24-hour access from any location: Cus- tomers are able to place their order any time day or night and from any location through the Internet. Therefore, it is possible for an organization to increase sales. • 0D[LPXPSUR¿W All of the above points KDYHWKHSRWHQWLDOWRPD[LPL]HSUR¿WIRU organizations. • Expansion of business: By working together, large organizations have the op- portunity to expand their business with the cooperation of SMEs. Thus, SMEs also have the opportunity to share tasks with large organizations. Ultimately, through collaboration, organizations can collectively LQFUHDVHWKHLUSUR¿WV • Duplication of work: Reducing the du- plication of work can save both time and money. For example, a pricing strategy for a product can be negotiated electronically, and then can be used for the collaborating organizations. In summary, factors in conducting e-business can be categorized as general problems associated ZLWKWKHRSHUDWLRQRIWKHRUJDQL]DWLRQ¿QDQFHV pricing strategy, and customer service), and more VSHFL¿FSUREOHPVLQPDQDJLQJWKHVXSSO\FKDLQ (lack of information sharing and access, and lack of agreement to work together). To examine the supply chain further in an electronic context, the use of agent-based technology is investigated. AGENT-BASED TECHNOLOGY Agent-based technology has emerged as the SUHIHUUHG WHFKQRORJ\ IRU HQDEOLQJ ÀH[LEOH DQG dynamic coordination of spatially distributed HQWLWLHVLQDVXSSO\FKDLQ$XWKRUVKDYHGH¿QHG agents from different perspectives. The main focus of this chapter is a discussion of software LQWHOOLJHQW DJHQWV DQG WKH GH¿QLWLRQ SUHVHQWHG is adapted and based on Wooldridge and Jen- nings (1995). An agent is a computer system that is situated in a particular environment, and is capable of ÀH[LEOH autonomous actions in that environment in order to meet its design objec- tives. Autonomy is a complicated concept, but it can be simply explained that the system should be able to perform without the direct intervention of humans (or other agents). At the same time, it should have control over its own actions and internal state. The meaning of ÀH[LEOHDFWLRQV is that the system must be: • Responsive: Agents should be able to per- ceive their environment, which may include the physical world, a user, a set of agents, or the Internet and can respond timely ac- cording to changes that occur in it. • Proactive: Agents cannot only perform based on their environment, but should also be able to exhibit opportunistic, goal- oriented behavior by taking the initiative according to their intention. • Social: Agents should be able to interact with one another as humans do, based on their own problem solving ability to help others with their activities, as required. . multi- DJHQWVVWHPLQWKH¿HOGRIVXSSOFKDLQPDQ- agement for electronic business. It investigates the coordination and cooperation processes, and proposes and discusses a newly developed model for an enhanced and effective cooperation. activ- ity electronically, it will be easier and faster, and, at the same time, very complex issues can be avoided. To perform these activities electronically using a cooperation and coordination. clearinghouse, and bank. Agent community is the basic unit in SAFER e-commerce, which offers virtual regions and vehicles to host and adminis- trate mobile agents during roaming, transaction, and evolution.