PhD in Open Constraint Satisfaction: SSCM, A Position Statement
Timothy Gosling · 2004
This document is intended to provide a statement of position of the PhD work currently being undertaken. The document consists of two elements. The first element is to provide a discussion of the work and its relationship with various areas of interest and work being undertaken by others. The second element of this document provides a summary of the work carried out so far and the future direction. It is anticipated that this document will contribute both towards the final thesis and upcoming supervisory boards. 1.3 Position Statement 1.3.1 Motivation and objectives At present various electronic market places, auctions and negotiation systems exist, in the near future full electronic supply chains will be possible and indeed desirable to improve efficiency [1]. This situation, however, presents a problem. While humans are good at negotiations and situation analysis they are less able to handle large volumes of information and numbers of transactions. What is need is a computer-based system or strategy for handling these situations. The strategy does not need to be the perfect negotiator, although it must be competent, but it must be able to deal with more negotiations more rapidly than a human operator could. The first step in the process of creating this computer-based strategy is to develop a system for modelling the supply chains. Once the model has been developed it will be possible to describe specific supply chain situations or scenarios and begin the process of strategy development and analysis. A primary objective of the work is thus to create this modelling tool and to model various situations with it. Once this objective has been met (at least in part) a further objective is to develop strategies that are capable of handling the modelled situations. These si...