A Multiagent Systems Approach for Managing Supply-Chain Problems: new tools and results
Rui Miguel da Silva Carvalho, Luís Custódio · INTELIGENCIA ARTIFICIAL · 2007
"The main purpose of this paper is to assess if Multi-agent Systems (MAS) technology can be used tomodel, study and manage Supply Chains (SC). A second objective is to present new tools and resultsthat we have not presented before. In this paper we present multi-agent technology as a soundalternative to classical optimization techniques that can contribute to solve hard problems. To validatethis hypothesis it was modelled and implemented a MAS with the following functionalities:simulation of an almost infinite number of agents, heuristics for decision making, possibility to chooseamong alternative decision strategies and tactics, different evaluation criteria and evaluation functions,different message sequences, and stochastic or deterministic behaviour. Two examples, one SC of thechemistry industry and the Hewlett-Packard SC, are presented to evaluate the usefulness of the MAStechnology"