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This study aims to develop a software agent-knowledge procurement management tool to address uncertainties from external and internal environments, such as record failure, slow logistics auditing and distribution delay toward improving procurement management in retailing enterprises.

Quantitative methodology was used to collect data using a self-administered survey from randomly selected procurement staffs, marketers and customers to measure their perception regarding the feasibility and acceptance of the implemented agent-knowledge-based procurement management tool.

Results from empirical analysis reveal that the implemented tool facilitates collaboration and interaction among buyers, sellers and procurement managers toward enhancing procurement managers’ flexibility to handle unexpected exceptions. In addition, results confirm the feasibility of the implemented tool in supporting procurement management toward handling inventory failure exception, which occurs in traditional procurement approaches. Moreover, descriptive results from user acceptance test verify that the tool was accepted by the respondents.

The limitation of this study is that the implemented tool is evaluated using data collected from respondents in Malaysia retailing enterprise only; thus, the results cannot be generalized to other enterprises and country. In addition, research implications from this study design a methodological and comprehensive software agent-knowledge-based model that support buyers, sellers and procurement managers with information to facilitate buying and selling operations.

Practically, the designed software agent-knowledge-based model describes how software agents collaborate with each other to facilitate procurement tasks and also use the knowledge base in the implemented tool to provide information sharing platform that manages the dynamics of procurement operations.

This research integrates software agents which are autonomous programs that carryout pre-defined task on behalf of end users. Socially, this study would be useful for procurement managers in developing mechanisms for instilling insights in retailing operations.

This research is among the first to attempt to develop a software agent-knowledge-based model to support procurement management in the retailing enterprise domain. It contributes to promote e-procurement practices by implementing a software agent-knowledge-oriented tool to address uncertainties experienced in retailing enterprise. It is envisaged that this study will provide basis for future research into e-procurement practices for retailing businesses in Malaysia and beyond.

In a previous paper (Nardi & O'Day 1996), we chose to begin thinking about intelligent software agents with a detailed look at what human agents do. Our interest is in agents that provide expert services to end users. We analysed data from two studies of reference librarians to see how they provide value to their clients, considering the librarians as exemplary human agents. Shneiderman (1995) observes that claims about intelligent software agents are vague, dreamy and unrealised: we wanted to bring some precision and optimistic realism to the discussion.

In this paper, we will address privacy and trust issues that arise in more advanced software systems. Though a lot of information is currently available in electronic form, not all of it should widely be accessible to everybody. The involved parties need full control on how their data are used and who has access. If the system consists of autonomous software agents, this problem requires extra attention and new working principles. We illustrate this in the case of a communication platform for multimodal transport. The major aim of the communication platform is to enhance exchanging information and to ultimately improve organisation/collaboration within the transport sector. A better informed view of the transport sector will facilitate better considered decisions for users of the communication platform. The software system merits credibility by accurately modelling all the relevant real world interactions of potential users of the system. We opted for a connectivity solution in which software agents act as representatives of the parties involved. All agents can be equipped with human‐like skills and qualities such as intelligence, autonomy, and the ability to cooperate, coordinate and negotiate. We demonstrate how cooperation between parties can be achieved while respecting their sensitivity concerning information.

Executive information systems, or strategic management support systems for senior managers, have traditionally addressed how to satisfy some predefined information needs of managers and how to help them in analyzing or solving predefined problems. They are usually not flexible enough to capture messages and signals from the business world that indicate impending opportunities or problems. In this paper we introduce a software agent approach into scanning support systems. We made a review of software agent fundamentals to understand what an agent is; what it can do and cannot do; what are the components of an agent; and how an agent can be constructed. We then examined its relevance in offering active scanning support to managers. An agent‐based support system is proposed. Useful software agents needed to constitute the system are identified. Tasks of the agent components are analyzed.

Reverse engineering methodology paves an efficient way for simulating and manufacturing existing objects with complex shapes, and a range of applications also has shown this approach to be feasible and efficient. However, in many applications, a lot of sub‐tasks in reverse engineering are usually not done in the same place, they need to be done cooperatively over the Internet or Intranet. So, this paper is concerned with developing a novel e‐service platform for remote service in reverse engineering applications based on mobile agent technology, and some correlative enabling technologies such as data compression, security considerations, agent models and so on. The framework was programmed using the Java Sevlets and Java Beans component models, and data transferring and processing were implemented based on the dispatch/retract mechanisms of mobile agents. The mobile agent is developed with IBM's Aglets Workbench, and the feasibility of the proposed method has been verified by a case.

Software agents are computer programs that run in the background and perform tasks autonomously as delegated by the user. Although there has been much research on this topic recently, usable software agents are at an early stage of development, and are only now starting to appear in real applications. Typical of these early stages, there has been a technology focus, rather than a product focus, in much of the development work to date. A fruitful application area for software agents is in the area of e‐commerce, where potential buyers can easily be overwhelmed by the flood of information that is available, thus potentially making less than optimal purchasing decisions. This paper blends models from marketing and learnings from the field of decision support systems to build a framework for the design of software agents to support in e‐commerce buying applications.

Intelligent software agents offer the potential to unleash the power of the Internet to optimise the process of supplier sourcing. Aims to promote an awareness in the buyer/supplier community of the potential for using intelligent software agents over the Internet for this purpose. The traditional relationship between suppliers and buyers is contrasted with that of Internet‐based trading. This comparison confirms that trust is a critical component in the traditional relationship and that an understanding of the nature of trust is necessary in revealing where and how agent technology will have maximum benefit for both buyers and suppliers. It is shown that the technology that can enable this form of sourcing is already well established, and a range of conceptual agents are described. Finally, identifies the benefits that will accrue to organisations that adopt agent technology as part of their supplier‐sourcing portfolio, and recommendations for further work are made.

Much previous research on improving information retrieval applications has focused on developing entirely new systems with advanced searching features. Unfortunately, most users seldom utilize these advanced features. This research explores the use of a software agent that assists the user during the search process. The agent was developed as a separate, stand‐alone component to be integrated with existing information retrieval systems. The performance of an information retrieval system with the integrated agent was subjected to an evaluation with 30 test subjects. The results indicate that agents developed using both results from previous user studies and rapidly modeling user information needs can result in an improvement in precision. Implications for information retrieval system design and directions for future research are outlined.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of an embedded pedagogical agent into a tutorial on achievement.

Research methodology is designed according to the post test control group model in which the experimental group (69 students) was exposed to a tutorial with an embedded pedagogical agent; control group (56 students) was exposed to the same tutorial without a pedagogical agent. The tutorial was developed by the researchers as educational software on the unit “Discovering Space” for 6th graders.

The data analysis showed that the experimental group performed significantly better than the control group which indicated that using a pedagogical agent in a tutorial has a positive effect on the achievement. Another finding related to the gender differences is that girls performed better than the boys.

This research has some implications for designing educational software. Embedded pedagogical agent is improving learning by providing interaction and motivational support. So designers must take in consideration of using animated pedagogical agent in educational software. The long‐term effects of interaction were not explored in this study.

It is important to choose a suitable agent according to domain and age group. The case of “whether the pedagogical interface agent should be intelligent or not” is also a subject open to debate. Intelligent agent holds the behavior of learner and adapts itself specifically to the learner.

This research has original value for instructional designers and educational software developers. Also this research has contributed to human–computer interaction domain.

Merges the latest results obtained by the holonic manufacturing systems (HMS) consortium with the latest developed standards for platform interoperability released by the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) to propose a novel e‐business model: the holonic e‐enterprise (HE). The HE extends both the HMS and FIPA models. On one side it extends the holonic manufacturing paradigm with one top level, the inter‐enterprise one. On the other side it extends the multi‐agent system (MAS) paradigm to the hardware (physical machine) level.