Abstract
This paper presents a multi-agents system called agent-based collaborative mold production (ACMP) system. ACMP supports the collaborative and autonomous mold manufacturing outsourcing processes. The mold manufacturing outsourcing processes involve not only many manufacturing sequences but also many collaboration partners. ACMP provides autonomous features to handle three major tasks in outsourcing. They are vendor selection, task selection, and real-time outsourcing task progress tracking. This research applies the analytic hierachy process (AHP) decision models to solve the vendor selection and task selection problems. In addition, radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is adopted to provide a real-time tracking capability for remote collaboration, control and monitoring among outsourcing partners. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.