The 2003 Supply Chain Management Trading Agent Competition

Supply Chain Management deals with the planning and coordination of bidding, production and procurement activities across the multiple organizations involved in the delivery of one or more products. With the emergence of electronic marketplaces, it is only natural to seek automated solutions that are capable of rapidly evaluating a large number of bidding and procurement options. In this paper, we present an integrated model that incorporates supply chain bidding, production and procurement. We discuss its computational complexity as well as the challenges that arise from the inherently stochastic and competitive nature of the resulting environment. A Web-based multi-agent simulation game based on this model was developed and validated in the context of the first Supply Chain Trading Agent Competition (TAC SCM 2003), where a total of 20 teams from around the world competed with one another. We review key agent strategies developed by competing teams and discuss the merits of competiti...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ACMICEC
• Authors: Raghu Arunachalam, Norman M. Sadeh
• Keywords: ACMICEC 2004, Supply Chain, Supply Chain Bidding, Supply Chain Management