Title: Managing information complexity of supply chains via agent-based genetic programming

Authors: Ken Taniguchi, Takao Terano

Addresses: Graduate School of Systems Management, University of Tsukuba, Otsuka 3-29-1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112 0012, Japan. ' Graduate School of Systems Management, University of Tsukuba, Otsuka 3-29-1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112 0012, Japan

Abstract: This paper proposes agent-based formulation of a supply chain management (SCM) system for manufacturing firms. We model each firm as a decision-making agent, which communicates each other through the blackboard architecture in distributed artificial intelligence. To overcome the issues of conventional SCM systems, we employ the concept of information entropy, which represents the complexity of the purchase, sales, and inventory activities of each firm. Based on the idea, we implement an agent-based simulator to learn ||good|| decisions via genetic programming in a logic-programming environment. From intensive experiments, our simulator has shown good performance against the dynamic environmental changes.

Keywords: supply chain management; SCM; information entropy; genetic programming; information complexity; information management; manufacturing firms; decision making agents; blackboard architecture; distributed artificial intelligence; DAI; purchasing; sales; inventory; simulation; agent-based systems; multi-agent systems; genetic algorithms; e-business; electronic business.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEB.2005.007267

International Journal of Electronic Business, 2005 Vol.3 No.3/4, pp.216 - 224

Published online: 30 Jun 2005 *

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