Agent-enabled service-oriented decision support systems

The design of Decision Support Systems have recently emphasized web enablement as the next step in design improvements for this class of applications. We argue that these approaches fail to address the key notion of adaptability in the support for decision makers. Instead of focusing exclusively on automation in decision making, we believe it is also necessary to pay attention to the interplay between decision makers and organizational processes. The service oriented view of organizations recognizes the need to accommodate the changing reality of organizational dynamics. For example, the service science approach focuses on interactions between service providers, their clients, and consumers as important interacting components of a service system. Current approaches to DSS design are constrained in terms of their ability to adapt to changes in user requirements and to provide support for the evolution of systems. This situation worsens when resources are distributed at different locations across organizations, decision making processes are required to be integrated at different points in time, and when collaboration is needed among decision makers. However, this typically characterizes the needs of collaborative decision making in networked organizations as exemplified by systems used for supply chain management. To address these problems we leverage the power of services for designing a framework that explicitly recognizes the need for design based on service delivery. We develop an agent-enabled service-oriented architecture to realize the proposed framework with service and agent paradigms. The architecture is refined and validated with an implementation in the supply chain context. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.