Analyzing the Procurement Process in a Simplified Version of the TAC SCM Game

The TAC supply chain management game presents a simulated market environment with automated trading agents each responsible for making decisions for the whole manufacturing process from procuring raw materials to shipping the completed orders to customers. Agents in this game have to deal with challenging and complicated problems with little or no direct information about the state of the game. Procurement process is one of these challenging tasks and is the first process that agents have to deal with. Efficient procurement process can lead to significant profit in the game. In this paper, we focus on the procurement process and specifically consider the procurement process of the University of Michigan’s agent, Deep Maize. Then we introduce and analyze two strategies to exploit this agent. Finally we conclude our paper by showing some future considerations for agent’s procurement designs.