> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) < 1 Abstract— In today’s complex and competitive market, the competition for better performance is not only limited to be between the manufacturing companies rather it expands to cover the whole supply chain and hence create a competition between the supply chains. In such a case, communication for collaboration between members of supply chain is very vital. In this paper we propose to initiate a research on an agent oriented Peer-to-Peer supply chain which is able to create a trust worthy environment for sharing information between the partners. Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment will be taken as the problem domain while Agent technology and Peer- to-Peer based system will be explored as an approach to the solution. Index Terms— Agent, CPFR, Peer-to-Peer System, Supply Chain I. INTRODUCTION ith newer technologies and practices in hand, the present day markets have grown to be more complex and competitive in nature. Competition in the market today is not only limited to be between the manufacturing companies. Rather, the manufacturing companies, the suppliers, and the logistics service provider for a company integrate together as a supply chain and compete against other supply chains for competitive products [1]. In general, the integrated and collaborative business model can lower cost and improve customer service [3]. Further, it has potential to offer planning capabilities such as continuous planning, forecasting and replenishment or product life cycle management [2]. The collaborative planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR * ) model developed by the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standards (VICS) offers guidelines on developing shared processes among the collaborating partners for joint planning and demand forecasting, and synchronizing material flows based on customer demand [3]. Several companies have set up CPFR pilot and received positive output from the implementation [3]. In our research we intend to tackle CPFR as a problem and propose solutions based on Peer-to-Peer Agent System. It is our expectation that this system will develop as an intelligent, integrated and * CPFR is a Registered trademark of Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standards (VICS) collaborative supply chain framework. This paper reviews some aspects of the problem and solution approaches and also gives an overview of our research program. II. SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT PROBLEM Supply Chains in organizations exist by default as a “phenomenon of business” [4]. Thus, a supply chain is not something which needs to be created, however, for better results organizations will have to manage their supply chain so as to enrich it with information and make the information available across the members of the chain. Such a management system certainly demands collaboration among the partners, and needs to be backed up by the state of the art Information and Communication technology. With a better supply chain management system in hand, an organization is able to do away with problems like shortages, over supply, and poor lead times in manufacturing, which might arise due to improper management of Information. Moreover, collaborative business models offer the possibility of making joint business plans to come up with better planning and forecasting of different aspects like sales, demand etc. However, creation, management and maintenance of collaborative supply chains pose challenge from both the process as well as implementation view point. From [3] and [5] we gather that the following issues are prominent in this regard: a. Trust between supply chain parties to share information b. Creating shared processes among the supply chain parties. c. Lack of common standards for sharing information d. Security protocols for securing proprietary information of the parties involved These issues are important in guiding us to an appropriate model of supply chain that we intend to design. It is our belief that next generation of supply chains are collaborative supply chains and all of these issues need to be handled properly in order to materialize a collaborative and trust worthy supply chain. Agent Oriented Peer-to-Peer Supply Chain for Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment Sanat Kumar Bista 1 , Keshav P. Dahal 1 and Bhadra Man Tuladhar 2 1 School of Informatics, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, UK 2 Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel, Kavre, Nepal W