Collaboration Technologies for Supporting e-Supply Chain Management

This chapter presents the design and implementation of an Event-Trigger-Rule-based electronic supply-chain management system (ESCM). The ESCM is constructed by a network of Knowledge Web Servers, each of which consists of a Web server, an Event Manager, an Event-Trigger-Rule (ETR) Server, a Knowledge Profile Manager, a Persistent Object Manager, a Metadata Manager, a Negotiation Server, and a Cost-Benefit Evaluation Server. Together, they manage the activities and interactions among Manufacturers, Distributors and Retailers. ESCM offers a number of features. First and foremost is the flexibility offered to business entities in defining their own rules according to their own business strategies. Second, since the rules that control the business activities are installed and processed by the multiple copies of th ETR server installed at business entities’ individual sites, their privacy and security are safeguarded. Third, ESCM’s event, event filtering and event notification mechanisms keep both Buyers and Suppliers better informed with more timely information about business events so that they or their software systems can take the proper actions in different business processes.