Construction material supply chain management: Towards an agent-based technology

There is a need for managing the material supply chain to enhance performance of the entire project. The material supply chain consists of several participants and activities, but their complex interaction and interfacing need special attention. Conventionally, the interaction of these participants and activities has been carried out independently, and these have hindered performance of the whole project. An approach based on agent system approach is presented to address the problems of a material supply chain domain as part of an on-going research. The system views the material supply chain environment as a collaborative system, where supply chain participants are each represented by autonomous agents that can act on their behalf to carry out specific tasks. This system will employ concepts from distributed artificial intelligence (DAI), such as distributed problem solving to manage and co-ordinate the supply chain participants and activities.