Abstract

Supply chain systems bring a new perspective to collaboration in organizations. Human driven collaboration through communication, knowledge sharing, and cooperation, can be extended outside the organization and its partners in the supply chain. However, while human driven collaboration is part of business processes in the supply chain, they are usually depicted in models either from a high-level abstract view or implicitly included in the use of the exception related mechanisms. This creates the need for an ontology capable of representing human-driven collaboration in Supply Chain Business Processes that can enable collaboration. The Agent Lab Language (TALL) ontology was chosen as a possible solution to the proposed research problem because it is constructed around the concept of an agent and business collaborations. A Bunge-Wand-Weber ontological representation analysis was further used to evaluate the ontological completeness of the Agent Language Lab (TALL). From this analysis a set of propositions was elaborated in accordance with human-driven collaboration requirements. Following these propositions and the results of the analysis, additional constructs were proposed to the TALL ontology as a solution to the research problem.