A web-based approach for exceptions management in the supply chain

This research aims at developing collaborative planning and scheduling in complex and dynamic supply chains by providing a software architecture and a methodology to define cooperation in a distributed environment. The study contributes to gain the competitive advantage at the extended enterprise, since it analyzes the implications of changes occurred at a certain point of the supply chain for other nodes. This way, the different production schedules of the supply chain are coordinated in order to find a best global solution, thus leading to more realistic plans, better due date fulfilment and less inventory levels in the supply chain as a whole. The general framework of the project using a decentralized approach can be defined by means of three subsystems of communication based on agents: (i) a communication subsystem inside the plants, which will manage the unforeseen events that may lead to a rescheduling of part or the entire production plan, (ii) an inter-plants communication subsystem, which will manage the events produced in a plant that may affect other plants and (iii) a supply chain communication subsystem, which will manage events occurred in a plant that can affect suppliers and/or customers. Next steps will include full development and systematic tests of the prototype that will check the suitability of the architecture and algorithms selected. This research is being funded by Grant PI2008-08 from the Basque Government in Spain.