Collaborative agents supporting tactical planning activities – an industrial application

Abstract

This paper presents a collaborative agents model for Sales and Operation Planning (S&OP) in industry. We show how an S&OP system can be used in a multi-agent approach considering existing legacy software and how people and software agents interact in a planning environment in a process industry, such as the petrochemical industry. The model helps to describe the process, determine the pre-existing software integrations, define responsibilities, and promote communication and learning. The solution adopted is crucial for a high performance S&OP. It is also important to consider the interaction among human agents and software agents, which are required for its success. The multiagent system (MAS) paradigm is useful for helping industries handle distributed information sources and interactions between a number of actors and teams. We examine activities of an S&OP in a petrochemical company and how these activities can be more efficiently performed through MAS.