Efficient Mechanisms for Task Allocation in Agile Supply Chain Management

作     者：REN Chang-rui, CHAI Yue-ting, LIU Yi (National Engineering Research Center for Computer Integrated Manufactu ring Systems, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China) 

出 版 物：《厦门大学学报（自然科学版）》 (Journal of Xiamen University：Natural Science)

年 卷 期：2002年第41卷第S1期

页      面：274-页

核心收录：

学科分类：12[管理学] 1201[管理学-管理科学与工程(可授管理学、工学学位)] 

主　　题：agile supply chain task allocation auction 

摘      要：An agile supply chain can be defined as a dynamic s up ply network of some autonomous or semi-autonomous business entities, which can well adapt to the competitive, cooperative and dynamic market environment Agile supply chain needs quick response ability to the unpredictable and ever-changin g market environment, and the entities in agile supply chain have complex relati onships of competition, cooperation and dynamics, which make agile supply chain management a very complex process that includes a lot of no-linear, dynamic and uncertain factors. There is a common opinion that applying multi-agent collaborative work environm ent is an appropriate method to solve agile supply chain management problem. We have presented a model based on coordination of Multi-Agent System (MAS) two ye ars ago, and it has already been proved to be a rather better model by practical project. In the model, we apply MAS structure, and agents negotiate each other to achieve coordination, so the communication among agents becomes very impo rtant. Task allocation is a very common problem in agile supply chain management, and t here are many complex task re-allocation problems at the transaction level. In such situations, agents need to negotiate with others to produce effective alloc ation results. But traditional negotiation mechanisms often cease to work as a r esult of communication or computational complexities. Auctions provide an effici ent way of resolving one-to-many negotiations, so in this paper, we choose Eng lish auction to design a sufficient negotiation mechanism, and use combinatorial auction to solve the complex task re-allocation problems. We first analyze the features of task allocation problems in agile supply chain and build a problem model, and then design a comprehensive task allocation mechanism based on auctio n theories. Finally, by examining our results for what it is, essentially, an ap plication of game-theory and mechanism design to existing application, we draw