Automating supplier selection procedures

methodology and tools to automate the supplier selection procedures, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, as these enterprises often lack in-house knowledge of achieving this. This dissertation solves the problem using a methodology consisting three components. The three components are a data collection system (based on mobile agents and XML) for information gathering, an inference engine (based on array-based logic) to make on-line decisions real-time, and a performance evaluation engine (based on Manufacturing systems theory and Petri net) to evaluate the performance of a supplier in real-time. In the first chapter (introduction) the key concepts such as agile virtual enterprise, supply chain management, and small and medium-sized enterprises are introduced. At the end of this chapter, the problem statement of this Ph.D. research and the results of this research (significance) are stated. The second chapter is about a modeling approach for modeling supplier selection procedures. The third chapter introduces the methodology for automating supplier selection procedures. The fourth, fifth and sixth chapters are about the components of th