Botticelli: A Supply Chain Management Agent
Mike Benisch, Amy Greenwald, Ioanna Grypari, Roger Lederman, Victor Naroditskiy, and Michael Tschantz
Abstract
The paper describes the architecture of Brown University's agent,
Botticelli, a finalist in the 2003 Trading Agent Competition in Supply
Chain Management (TAC SCM). In TAC SCM, a simulated computer
manufacturing scenario, Botticelli competes with other agents to win
customer orders and negotiates with suppliers to procure the
components necessary to complete its orders.
In this paper, two subproblems that dictate Botticelli's behavior are
formalized: bidding and scheduling. Mathematical programming
approaches are applied in attempt to solve these problems optimally.
In addition, greedy methods that yield useful approximations are
described. Test results compare the performance and computational
efficiency of these alternative techniques.