Abstract
There is an increasing interest in exploring the opportunities for competitive advantage that arise from reinforcing core competencies and innovative capabilities of the individual companies, and by forming integrated supply networks. In complex and dynamic environments such as the automotive and semiconductor industries, managing and co-ordinating the procurement of materials, their transformation into intermediate and finished products, and the distribution to the final customers, are very demanding tasks in terms of information systems. In general, current available software packages do not provide the full support needed for networked and distributed organizations, and are clearly insufficient in what concerns the planning and coordination activities needed in these heterogeneous environments. In order to adequately tackle these problems, this work proposes a multi-agent system architecture for real-time customer-order planning in distributed manufacturing enterprises, addressing the requirements of a make-to-order environment. The present research work resulted from the Co-OPERATE European Project. Enhanced visibility of information, early warning of disturbances, synchronized production and collaborative planning in the supply chain are the general goals of the project. In particular, for aggregate planning and order promising, a distributed and decentralized information system, based on an architecture of agents and extensively using the internet, was designed and implemented. This system aims at responding to the basic requirements of cooperativeness, integration and configurability, and at providing new and more powerful decision support.

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A workshop on interdisciplinary approaches to achieving and analyzing system dependability for the DSN audience is discussed. The goal of this workshop is to bring together experts from different disciplines and application domains to exchange ideas, make concrete progress across disciplinary barriers and establish contacts and possible collaborations. The selected contributions cover overlaps between the 'standard' concerns of dependable systems and networks and those of psychology, sociology and other 'human' sciences, the law, or disciplines. The format of the workshop emphasize extensive discussion and be geared to achieve effective interchange of ideas among people from different backgrounds.

Abstract
SrBi2Nb2O9 (SBN) is a Bi-layered perovskite compound that, due to it relatively high Curie temperature, has potential application as high ceramic transducer. The preparation of SBN by the conventional solid state route requires high temperatures (above 1000degreesC) which allow significant bismuth losses, leading to non-stoichiometric compositions. This work describes a new method to obtain SBN that overcomes this problem. Compared to sol-gel methods, it has the advantage of using reagents that are less toxic and less expensive than the alkoxides used by these chemical methods. The thermal behavior of SBN precursors prepared by this new method is compared to that observed by the conventional solid state route. This new method offers the possibility of producing SBN at lower temperatures than those needed by the conventional route.

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