An extended contract net mechanism for dynamic supply chain formation and its application in China petroleum supply chain management

Abstract

Software agents representing supply chain partners make it possible to automate supply chain management and particularly can address the challenging problem of automating the process of dynamic supply chain formation. This paper puts forward an extended contract net mechanism for dynamic supply chain formation and applies it to China petroleum supply chain management, which is characterized by a semi-monopolized market, where conventional negotiation protocols are limited because they are based on the assumption of a pure market. The proposed multi-agent negotiation mechanism is algorithmized and validated in two scenarios of dynamic supply chain formation, i.e., semi-monopolized market and emergency, respectively.

Mediating Dynamic Supply Chain Formation by Collaborative Single Machine Earliness/Tardiness Agents in Supply Mesh

“…In addition to buy/sell, collaborative and competitive relationships should also be considered. Tian et al [16] developed an extended contract net mechanism for supply chain formation in a semi-governed scenario. Their negotiation protocols worked on a semimonopolized vertical market, China petroleum.…”

Dynamic mutual adjustment search for supply chain operations planning co-ordination

“…Contract-net and auction techniques , Lau et al 2006, Lou et al 2004, Maturana and Norrie 1997, Sun and Wu 2009, Tian et al 2006, D'Amours et al1997, Fan et al 2003, Kutanoglu and Wu 1999, Zhang and Luo 2009, Zhou and Liu 2007 involve a process where a company sends a call-for-proposal to several potential suppliers, or on a blackboard, and receives bids from them. The coordination of operations planning involves the selection of matching sub-proposal from a set of bids sent by potential suppliers.…”

“…Almost 22 references in our selected literature , Lau et al 2006, Lou et al 2004, Maturana and Norrie 1997, Sun and Wu 2009, Tian et al 2006, D'Amours et al1997, Fan et al 2003, Kutanoglu and Wu 1999, Zhang and Luo 2009 Liu 2007) exploit one form or another of bidding technique. These approaches are rooted in economics and based on so-called negotiations.…”

“…In brief, Contract-net involves a process where a company sends a call-for-proposal to several potential suppliers, or on a blackboard, and receives bids from them. Such bids can either be selected individually against one another, or collectively, in order to assemble an entire virtual supply chain , Tian et al 2006. Similarly, although bids are generally derived from one single planning alternative , they can also contain several sub-proposals to choose from, each one being derived from different local operations planning alternatives, as proposed in D' Amours et al (1997).…”