Intelligent agents for an e-business based third party logistics

Logistics plays a major role in enhancing organizational competitiveness by improving information and material flows in e-business environment. Since today's markets are highly dynamic. With the rapid development of e-business and for its openness, globalization, low-cost, high efficiency, the supply chain needs to integrate and improve the competitive advantage. Enterprises are looking for more professional logistics service vendors. Then the third party logistics begin to attract some enterprises' attention. By analyzing the relationship between the third party and the supply chain members, the authors suggest that the third party logistics could enhance the value of the customer by reengineering its logistics business process to accommodate the customer. Then five intelligent agents are designed to form an e-business based third party logistics system which could construct virtual logistics teamwork suitable for a certain customer's need and make third party logistics provide better service for customer.