Pierluigi Argoneto

High Level Planning of Reconfigurable Enterprises: a Game Theoretic Approach

Reconfigurable Enterprises (REs) represent production networks made of different and geographically dispersed plants that, in case of unpredictable market changes, can be reconfigured in order to gather a specific production objective. However, REs effectiveness and efficiency depend on the extent to which global performance is obtained. Basically two approaches are available to reach coordination: centralised or decentralised planning tools. In this paper, the authors propose a novel cooperative game theoretical approach for distributed production planning at high level of a RE; the proposed approach has been benchmarked in front of both a distributed one, based on negotiation, and a centralized one.

Supporting capacity sharing in the cloud manufacturing environment based on game theory and fuzzy logic

This paper proposes a Framework for Capacity Sharing in Cloud Manufacturing (FCSCM) able to support the capacity sharing issue among independent firms. The success of geographical distributed plants depends strongly on the use of opportune tools to integrate their resources and demand forecast in order to gather a specific production objective. The framework proposed is based on two different tools: a cooperative game algorithm, based on the Gale–Shapley model, and a fuzzy engine. The capacity allocation policy takes into account the utility functions of the involved firms. It is shown how the capacity allocation policy proposed induces all firms to report truthfully their information about their requirements. A discrete event simulation environment has been developed to test the proposed FCSCM. The numerical results show the drastic reduction of unsatisfied capacity obtained by the model of cooperation implemented in this work.

Capacity investment decision in co-opetitive network by information sharing

The proposed research concerns the capacity investment decisions in a co-opetitive network. The proposed model takes into account a certain degree of information sharing: specifically, the standard real option methodology is combined with a fuzzy engine. The fuzzy engine collects the information of the network in order to support the capacity investment decision. In particular, the environment concerns the capacity expansion issue for independent plants operating in a co-opetitive network. The proposed approach is compared with a case characterized by no information sharing among the plants. An opportune simulation environment (based on the JAVA package) has been developed in order to test the proposed approach in several environmental conditions. The simulation results highlight the benefits of the proposed approach: the strong reduction of the capacity investment value and a more specific identification regarding the market conditions in which this goal is relevant.

Innovative Tools for Business Coalitions in B2B Applications

1. Business to Business E-marketplaces: A Literature Overview and Motivations.- 2. Multi Agent Architecture.- 3. Game Theory Overview.- 4. Bargaining Models in E-marketplaces.- 5. Models for Coalition Management.- 6. Simulation Environment.- 7. Simulation Results.- 8. Conclusions and Future Developments.

Workload Assignment in Production Networks by Multi Agent Architecture

Distributed production networks are considered organizational structures able to match agility and efficiency necessary to compete in the global market. Performances of such organization structures heavily depend on the ability of the network actors of coordinating their activities. This chapter concerns the low level of the production planning that is aim is to allocation the orders to the distributed plant. The orders assigned by the medium level have to be allocated to the plant able to manufacture the product. A this level the coordination among the plant is crucial activity to purse an high level of performance. In this context, three approaches for coordinating production planning activities within production networks are proposed. Moreover, the proposed approaches are modeled and designed by a Multi Agent Technology and a negotiation model is proposed. In order to test the functionality of the proposed agent based distributed architecture for distributed production planning, a proper simulation environment has been developed. Moreover, a benchmark model is proposed in order to evaluate the performances of the proposed approaches. The Multi Agent System and simulation environment can be utilized to learn the optimal coordination policy to adopt in distributed production planning problem.

Models for Coalition Management

The possibility to make coalition among SMEs can be a valid tool to improve the performance for both customers and suppliers. The issues related to a generic coalition strategy concern: the coalition formation, the related management procedure and the profit sharing policy. This chapter presents the methodologies proposed in this research that are able to support the entire life cycle of a coalition. All the proposed approaches are based on game theory. In particular, an innovative methodology has been developed for each issue related to the life cycle of the coalition, each one of them formalized and developed within the multi-agent architecture discussed in Chap. 2.

Game Theory: An Overview

The goal of this chapter is to give a brief overview about Game Theory and, specifically, about Game Theory concepts and tools. Due to the need of short explanations, all proofs will be omitted, and we will focus only on the intuition behind the reported results. The concepts described in this chapter are used to develop the coalition approaches proposed in this book. The results of the concepts and methodologies discussed in this chapter are integrated with negotiation and production planning activities in order to support the coalition activities.

Conclusions and Future Developments

In this chapter, the conclusions of the research described in the above chapters are discussed. The chapter highlights the major contributions of the research developed. In particular, the value added by the coalition approaches is highlighted. The conclusions are supported by an extensive experimental investigation based on a simulation environment developed in open source language. The approach based on NASH equilibrium leads to the better compromise between customer and suppliers benefits. The suppliers gain the major benefits from the centralized approaches. Moreover, the future development paths are discussed.

Business-to-Business E-Marketplaces: A Literature Overview and Motivations

E-business applications require solid business models to support the manufacturing enterprises involved and gain real benefits from these applications. E-marketplaces profitability can be increased by an integration of multi-agent paradigm, production planning, negotiation and coalition support tools. This chapter introduces the concept of e-marketplaces and the adoption in Business-to-Business environment. Then, the state of the scientific literature is discussed for the several tools proposed in the literature. The chapter discusses the needs of innovative tools to support the e-marketplaces in order to increase the added value by the e-marketplaces. Finally, the motivations are discussed and the organization of the book is described.

Bargaining Models in E-Marketplaces

Bargaining model is one of the main key steps in e-marketplace transaction. The satisfaction of buyers and sellers strongly depends on models of negotiation performed by the e-marketplace. This chapter describes the bargaining models adopted by the buyers and sellers in the agent-based architecture described previously in Chap. 2. The approaches proposed in here are deeply described also considering that the bargaining approaches are based on the information provided by the production planning tool. This link is considered an important link between commercialization and production activities, strongly improving the performances of the bargaining protocol.