FarMAS: a MAS for extended quality workflow

To date, the supply chain management systems offer no solutions for quality control of electrical domestic appliances through the traceability of components (hw or sw) information. Failures in assembled products may be detected at many points of the product life, therefore an early diagnosis could depend on the retrieval of all significant information recorded along the extended supply chain. The basic idea proposed in this work is to define a society of autonomous agents created to support the traceability of components information in a federated enterprises environment. We discuss, as a case study, a simple supply chain for the production of electrical appliances such as washing machines, refrigerators or dishwashers whose components' traceability is defined in terms of a kind of workflow extended for quality control (EQuW: extended quality workflow).