Isabel Fernández Quesada

Multiagent Model for Supply Chain Management

There are several circumstances which, in the last two decades, have granted the Supply Chain Management (SCM) a strategic role in the search for competitive advantage. Thus, this paper applies multiagent methodology to optimize the management. We represent the supply chain as a Global Multiagent System, composed of four Multiagent Subsystems, which replicate the behavior of the different levels of the supply chain. Thereby, each member has its own decision-making capacity and seeks to optimize the performance of the supply chain. We will tackle the problem from two complementary perspectives: reducing the Bullwhip Effect, which can be considered as one of the main sources of inefficiencies in the SCM, and minimizing management costs, both from a non collaborative approach, where each level seeks the best solution for himself, and from a collaborative approach, where each level negotiates with the rest looking for the best solution for the whole supply chain.