An e-releaser of production orders in the extended enterprise
研究利用新信息和通信技术及多智能体建模，支持扩展/虚拟企业中生产订单释放业务流程，提出名为e-releaser的集成应用，并在服装行业测试，改善了流程周期、成本等绩效指标。
This study has the objective to apply new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and multi-agent modelling concepts in order to support the business process of production orders release in extended/virtual enterprises. In a previous publication (Tatsiopoulos, Computers in Industry, 33, 335–344, ) an object-oriented orders release reference model has been defined as a link between production management and shop floor control software in the one-firm environment. This study's main objective is to extend this model in the multifirm extended enterprise, taking advantage of agent technology and the internet. The proposed solution is an integrated application called e-releaser, which is responsible for the order release process management in three different levels, these being the partner selection and order management, the material management and the capacity management level. Each one of these three sub processes is supported and managed by an agent based submodule of the e-releaser tool. Finally, the e-releaser application was field-tested in an industrial user of the apparel sector and gave rather satisfactory results in improving predefined business performance indicators such as process lead-time, process cost and cost per order.