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.