A multi-agent and auction-based framework and approach for carrier collaboration

Abstract

Carrier collaboration in transportation means multiple carriers form an alliance to optimize their transportation operations through sharing transportation requests and vehicle capacities. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent and auction-based framework and approach for carrier collaboration in less than truckload transportation. In this framework, the carriers outsource/acquire requests through multiple auctions, one for outsourcing each request; a carrier acts as an auctioneer when it wants to outsource a request to other carriers, whereas the carrier acts as a bidder when it wants to acquire a request from other carriers; for each carrier, which requests it should outsource and acquire are determined by solving its outsourcing requests selection problem and requests bidding problem, respectively. These two decision problems are formulated as mixed integer programming problems. The auction of each request is multiround; in each round, the auctioneer determines the outsourcing price of the request and each bidder determines whether it acquires the request at the given price; the auctioneer lowers the outsourcing price if multiple carriers bid for the request or raises the price if no carrier bids for it. The auction process continues until only one carrier bids for the request or a given number of rounds are achieved. In the second case, if no agent bids for the request, then it is returned to the outsourcing agent; if multiple bidding agents compete for the request, a conflict resolution procedure is used to determine which carrier wins it. The approach is decentralized, asynchronous, and dynamic, where multiple auctions may occur simultaneously and interact with each other. The performance of the approach is evaluated by randomly generated instances and compared with an individual planning approach and a centralized planning approach.

Semantic transportation planning for food products supply chain ecosystem within difficult geographic zones

“…They demonstrated that for information sharing, a decentralized method is superior for maintaining the confidentiality; however, a centralized method surely produces more profitable results. Dai and Chen (2011) proposed order sharing on two decisions-based problem. The first decision is to choose requests that a carrier does not wish to serve and the second decision is to choose requests that are desirable to serve.…”

Developing Coalitions by Pairwise Comparisons: a Preliminary Study

“…When all business organizations create a grand coalition, it is the most concerning alliance formation problem when the collaboration is super-additive. It is addressed in [28], [29], [23], [22], [15], [11]. The super-additivity means that whatever two separate coalitions creating union get at least as much as they get independently.…”

Interaction between intelligent agent strategies for real-time transportation planning

“…Closely related work can be found in Berger and Bierwirth (2010), Dai and Chen (2011) where horizontal collaboration between carriers is considered and where each of the carrier agents may act as an auctioneer to outsource transportation requests while the another carrier agents act as bidders. Dai and Chen (2011) explicitly formulates this as a two decision problem, one for the auctioneer and one for the bidder.…”

“…Dai and Chen (2011) explicitly formulates this as a two decision problem, one for the auctioneer and one for the bidder. By using simulation, they evaluate collaborative approach with (i) the individual planning approach (no job exchange) and (ii) a centralized planning approach.…”

“…Because we include models for both shipper agents and vehicle agents, we can study the emergent behavior of this combined system. Our study differs from Dai and Chen (2011) in the sense that we focus on the added value of anticipatory behavior of the two agent types. As shown in Sect.…”