Interactive multi-attribute electronic negotiations in the supply chain: design issues and an application prototype

We report on the development of a generic application for interactive electronic negotiations in the supply chain. We introduce the concept of interactive bilateral multi-attribute electronic negotiations and explain its significance. We specify an application architecture for this domain, showing three main components and four interfaces. We apply the ebXML framework to model the negotiation process and negotiation documents. As ebXML does not supply suitable process descriptions for generic, interactive electronic negotiations, we suggest a novel ebXML negotiation process model. Additionally, we develop ebXML document structures for this domain.