A multi-agent approach for task allocation and execution for supply chain management

As the structure of multi-agent systems (MAS) inherently meets the requirements of autonomy and decentralization for supply chains, there are many researchers engaged in application of the MAS architecture to assist to simulating and modeling supply chain dynamics, as well as solving some local decision problems, e.g. transportation planning, production scheduling, and etc.. However, our studies are focused on developing a MAS for supply chain management in the operational level, which integrates planning, execution and supervising. In our framework, intra-organizational task allocation and interorganizational task re-allocation are critical to effective coordination and scheduling in the supply chain. And we introduce a sealed combinatorial auction mechanism to solve this problem. In order to facilitate the mechanism, the components of different agents and the negotiation protocol supporting interactions between them are presented, and some related topics are also discussed in this paper.