Patent ID: 7376600

Claim:
A distributed inventory management system, the system comprising one or more components collectively operable to: receive information regarding a plurality of participants in a value chain, information regarding replenishment policies used in different tiers in the value chain, and information regarding one or more items relevant in the value chain; model relationships between two or more of the participants based on the received information; model the one or more items based on the received information; and receive inventory data from the participants relating to the one or more items; the system further comprising at least one software agent operable to: evaluate the received inventory data according to one or more business rules associated with the agent; execute a business process associated with the agent based on the evaluation of the inventory data and the models of the relationships and the items; and communicate output of the business process to one or more of the participants, wherein executing a business process comprises generating an alert when different replenishment policies are used in different tiers in the value chain.