Software Agent Technology for Large Scale, Real-time Logistics Decision Support

Daniel H. Wagner Associates proposes to develop a tool called the Logistics Agent Wizard (LAW) for the creation and control of logistics goal-based software agents. The LAW will consist of three major parts: the Requirements Wizard, the Agent Builder,and the Agent Monitor. The Requirements Wizard will provide an interface for the user to enter the information required to perform a specified task (e.g. consumption trend analysis, predictive failure, etc.). The Agent Builder will provide an interfacefor modifying agent behavior based on the algorithmic components of the specified task. The Agent Monitor will provide an interface for the user to view agent progress and control agent behavior. The agents dispatched by the LAW in Phase I will bepreprogrammed software components with limited capabilities designed toward specific goals. We will extend this work in Phase II to develop a full prototype LAW capable of creating and controlling fully configurable agents to perform advanced logisticsfunctions.The immediate benefit to the Army logistics community will be more automated decision making based on automatic retrieval and display of information. This will lead to more efficient operations in the logistics community. Similar benefits willalso be demonstrated in other knowledge domains (METOC, weaponeering, etc.) and in the other military services during Phase II development and Phase III transition. This transition will also support an existing Wagner Associates software product calledMETPLAN to provide METOC data and visualization products to the Navy and Joint mission planning community. Commercial extensions of the Logistics Agent Wizard will be pursued in areas such as manufacturing, food service, travel planning, financialplanning, etc., as well as to create agents similar to an existing Wagner Associates software product called WeatherDog, which provides automated context-sensitive weather information through a web browser.