We present a formal model of negotiation between autonomous agents. The purpose of the negotiation is to reach an agreement about the provision of a service by one agent for another. The model de nes a range of strategies and tactics that agents can employ to generate initial o ers, evaluate proposals and o er counter proposals. The model is based on computationally tractable assumptions, demonstrated in the domain of business process management and empirically evaluated.

Automated negotiation is a key form of interaction in systems that are composed of multiple autonomous agents. The aim of such interactions is to reach agreements through an iterative process of making offers. The content of such proposals are, however, a function of the strategy of the agents. Here we present a strategy called the trade-off strategy where multiple negotiation decision variables are traded-off against one another (e.g., paying a higher price in order to obtain an earlier delivery date or waiting longer in order to obtain a higher quality service). Such a strategy is commonly known to increase the social welfare of agents. Yet, to date, most computational work in this area has ignored the issue of trade-offs, instead aiming to increase social welfare through mechanism design. The aim of this paper is to develop a heuristic computational model of the trade-off strategy and show that it can lead to an increased social welfare of the system. A novel linear algorithm is presented that enables software agents to make trade-offs for multidimensional goods for the problem of distributed resource allocation. Our algorithm is motivated by a number of real-world negotiation applications that we have developed and can operate in the presence of varying degrees of uncertainty. Moreover, we show that on average the total time used by the algorithm is linearly proportional to the number of negotiation issues under consideration. This formal analysis is complemented by an empirical evaluation that highlights the operational effectiveness of the algorithm in a range of negotiation scenarios. The algorithm itself operates by using the notion of fuzzy similarity to approximate the preference structure of the other negotiator and then uses a hill-climbing technique to explore the space of possible trade-offs for the one that is most likely to be acceptable.

This paper addresses the issues involved in software agents making trade-offs during automated negotiations in which they have information uncertainty and resource limitations. In particular, the importance of being able to make tradeoffs in real-world applications is highlighted and a novel algorithm for performing trade-offs for multi-dimensional goods is developed. The algorithm uses the notion of fuzzy similarity in order to find negotiation solutions that are beneficial to both parties. Empirical results indicate the benefits and effectiveness of the trade-off algorithm in a range of negotiation situations.

T raditional approaches to managing business processes are often inadequate for large± scale, organisation± wide, dynamic settings. However, since Internet and Intranet technologies have become widespread, an increasing number of business processes exhibit these properties. T herefore, a new approach is needed. T o this end, we describe the motivation, conceptualization, design, and implementation of a novel agent± based business process management system. T he key advance of our system is that responsibility for enacting various components of the business process is delegated to a number of autonomous problem± solving agents. T o enact their role, these agents typically interact and negotiate with other agents in order to coordinate their actions and to buy in the services they require. This approach leads to a system that is signi cantly more agile and robust than its traditional counterparts. T o help demonstrate these bene ts, a companion paper describes the application of our system to a real± world problem faced by British T elecom. Successful companies organize and run their business activities in an efficient manner. Core activities are completed on time and within the speci ed resource constraints. However, to stay competitive in today's markets, com± panies need to continually improve their efficiency± business activities need to be completed more quickly, to a higher quality and at a lower cost. To this end, there is an increasing awareness of the bene ts and potential com± petitive advantage that well± designed business process management systems can provide. Such systems can substantially improve efficiency by ensuring that business activities are better scheduled, executed, monitored, and coor± dinated.

This paper describes work undertaken in the ADEPT (Advanced Decision Environment for Process Tasks) project towards developing an agent-based infrastructure for managing business processes. We describe how the key technology of negotiating, service providing, autonomous agents was realized and demonstrate how this was applied to the BT (British Telecom) business process of providing a customer quote for network services.