Category: Supply Chain Management Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 1262 Intelligent Agent Technology in Supply Chains INTRODUCTION Firms are seeking competitive advantages through supply chain management (SCM) to stay com- petitive in today’s global market. An inevitable endeavor of SCM is to promote information transparency that enables firms to coordinate supply chain activities efficiently to better meet ever-changing customer demand. Effective SCM requires that the underlying information technol- ogy infrastructure of the supply chains be intel- ligent and flexible enough to adapt to market changes quickly. Recent development in agent technology provides new and interesting poten- tials of innovative SCM. In this chapter, we first review inter-organizational systems that support SCM and the major challenges faced with supply chains. Then we review the agent technology and its potential applications in SCM based on three major dimensions of the intelligent supply chain: Autonomy, Intelligence and Coordination. Finally, we propose an infrastructure necessary to achieve intelligent SCM and point out future research to intelligent SCM. BACKGROUND Today’s global market is electronically linked and dynamic in nature. In order to survive in the global market, many companies are trying their best to be flexible and responsive to customer demand. For instance, companies decentralize their value-adding activities by outsourcing and developing virtual enterprise. Companies are trying to establish partnership with wholesalers or retailers in other countries to promote their products or services. Nowadays, there is no single firm can effectively satisfy customer demand by managing all the business processes from the raw materials to end customer products. In fact, these individual firms depend on each other to succeed by working together to deliver the right product at the right time and right price at the right location. The interdependence among trad- ing partners calls for close cooperation and tight integration of different functions along the supply chain, which is quite different from the discrete, independent, and isolated activities across the supply chain (Dyer, 2000). Naturally, Supply chain coordination evolves as the management of the interdependent activities among chain mem- bers. Modern SCM heavily relies on information technology (IT) to improve inter-organizational coordination which significantly affects the firm’s performance (Sanders, 2008). Studies have found that adopting technological innovations is the most important weapon for firms to keep their competitive advantages (Kimberly & Evanisko, 1981). For example, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems have improved both operational and strategic efficiencies by an IT innovation (Subramani, 2004). With the development of Internet technology, Internet-enabled systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), E- procurement Applications, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) have been adopted in vari- Youqin Pan Salem State University, USA Zaiyong Tang Salem State University, USA DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-5202-6.ch116