Implementing a business process management system using ADEPT: A real-world case study

This article describes how the agent-based design of ADEPT (advanced decisi on environment for process tasks) and implementation philosophy was used to prototype a business process management system for a real-world applicatio n, The application illustrated is based on the British Telecom (BT) busines s process of providing a quote to a customer for installing a network to de liver a specified type of telecommunications service, Particular emphasis i s placed upon the techniques developed for specifying services, allowing ag ents with heterogeneous information models to interoperate, allowing rich a nd flexible interagent negotiation to occur, and on the issues related to i nterfacing agent-based systems and humans. This article builds upon the com panion article (Applied Artificial intelligence Vol. 14, no. 2, pgs. 145-18 9) that provides details of the rationale and design of the ADEPT technolog y deployed in this application.