Development of Electronic Marketplace for Efficient Bidding in Wood-based Products Industry

Abstract

One of the key indicators of the leveraging k-economy in Malaysia is the penetration of e-business among small and medium enterprises (SMEs). E-business represents one of the most innovative opportunities available to SMEs. As one of the Malaysian key export industries, wood-based product SMEs need to take advantage of the potentials of applying e-business technologies within its trading processes. The bid preparation process of SMEs in wood-based industry is still predominantly based on traditional approaches, tools and communication channels. To ensure the future competitiveness of SMEs, bid preparation has to be integrated as well as improved by applying a new business model in digital marketplace. Given this background, this paper describes the efforts to establish an electronic marketplace service in the supply chain of the wood-based product industry to innovate the efficient bidding process. We consider a common form of the English and Dutch auction to develop the Internet-enabled auction method based on existing solutions and standards. The actors, the relations, goods of the supply chain, and the business model are presented and the chosen architecture for the electronic marketplace and the supportive tools are described. The core functionality of the broker service, e.g. data exchange, repository access and negotiation, is outlined by means of IDEF0 modelling technique. A prototype that employs the system is implemented using the software agents of the IBM Aglet SDK. The agents are autonomous, goal-driven agents that work together cooperatively to assist different users in doing the online trading based on their interest and preferences.