rnet Infrastructure Supply Chain serving DSLAM and schedule a technician to meet with the ILEC's technician to connect the loop. The wholesaler's workflow manager must also check its warehouse inventory to ship a DSL modem to the customer. If modems are running low, the inventory system assigns a modem in stock to ship to the ISP's customer and transmits an order for more gear to the modem manufacturer. Returning to the ISP's back office, the ISP's gateway must communicate with the NSP's systems along with contacting the DSL wholesaler. The ISP orders more Internet access capacity for its link to the NSP's backbone. Separately, it places an order for the backhaul service to carry traffic from the DSL wholesaler's DSLAM to the ISP's rack, notifying the DSL wholesaler to cross connect with the NSP in the end office. (We're assuming in this case that the DSLAM is not directly connected to the backhaul network by a high- capacity router.) Once again, the ISP must await completion of these tasks before trying to activate Internet services or initiate billing. The wholesaler's and the NSP's gateway interfaces contact each other to coordinate their work force systems and arrange the cross connect. This last task, scheduling a cross connect between two IICs to serve a third, normally might require several phone calls among the ISP, DSL wholesaler, NSP and ILEC to get all of the right people together at the same time. In an eOSS environment, we'll assume enough integration exists among all of these parties to handle complex order management. In other words, we're assuming that the ILEC, the NSP, and the DSL wholesaler have worked together enough that they have their own lines of communication. The ISP does not have to introduce the wholesaler to the NSP or even explain what needs to be done. Standard procedures, such as loop changes and cross connects, are common enough that they should be as automated as possible in an eOSS environment, at least from a scheduling point of view. The goal of the automated supply chain and 