Research on Agent-Based Architecture of ERP for Small & Medium-Size Enterprise

With the rapid development of information technology and the gradual extension of information technology to enterprise, ERP systems become more and more complex and some new requirements that focus on both manufacturing activities and the supply chain are brought forward. To address these problems, a MAERP system architecture has been developed, in which the agents are classified into four types: F-agent for realizing an operation application, C-agent for coordinating with other agents, I-agent for a communication tool between the user and the MAERP system, and T-agent for performing specific tasks and data collecting. In this architecture, the communication and information exchanges are realized between agents (based on KQML) and software bus (based on CORBA) by means of communication switch broker. To illustrate the architecture, a simulation work has been proposed and the results implied that the architecture provides a very efficient method to design and implement ERP systems for small & medium-size enterprises, in communication and cooperation between the functional application systems to assure a global optimization, flexibility of system, the ability to extend and reengineer, and the reusable ability of legacy systems in distributed and heterogeneous environments, has played a very important role.