A Multiagent Systems Approach for Managing Supply-Chain Problems: new tools and results

The main purpose of this paper is to assess if Multi-agent Systems (MAS) technology can be used to model, study and manage Supply Chains (SC). A second objective is to present new tools and results that we have not presented before. In this paper we present multi-agent technology as a sound alternative to classical optimization techniques that can contribute to solve hard problems. To validate this hypothesis it was modelled and implemented a MAS with the following functionalities: simulation of an almost infinite number of agents, heuristics for decision making, possibility to choose among alternative decision strategies and tactics, different evaluation criteria and evaluation functions, different message sequences, and stochastic or deterministic behaviour. Two examples, one SC of the chemistry industry and the Hewlett-Packard SC, are presented to evaluate the usefulness of the MAS technology.