Conceptual Architecture for Agent-Based Modelling of Supplier Selection Conducted by a Supply Chain Dyad

Within the fourth stage of industrialization, artificial intelligence and in particular the multi-agent systems paradigm is highly adopted. Within the agent approach, the industrial resources are defined as intelligent agents that negotiate with each other to implement dynamic reconfiguration and reach agility and higher customer satisfaction. In this paper a smart configuration of the agent-based system for multi-product dyadic supplier selection is proposed. The objective is to select suppliers for multiple products simultaneously in a vertical collaboration context while involving the customer of the purchasing company and considering its preferences. Negotiation experiments are conducted for initial validation of the proposed conceptual architecture

Efficient performative actions for e-commerce agents

The foundational features of multi-agent systems are communication and interaction with other agents. To achieve these features, agents have to transfer messages in the predefined format and semantics. The communication among these agents takes place with the help of ACL (Agent Communication Language). ACL is a predefined language for communication among agents that has been standardised by the FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agent). FIPA-ACL defines different performatives for communication among the agents. These performatives are generic, and it becomes computationally expensive to use them for a specific domain like e-commerce. These performatives do not define the exact meaning of communication for any specific domain like e-commerce. In the present research, we introduced new performatives specifically for e-commerce domain. Our designed performatives are based on FIPA-ACL so that they can still support communication within diverse agent platforms. The proposed performatives are helpful in modelling e-commerce negotiation protocol applications using the paradigm of multi-agent systems for efficient communication. For exact semantic interpretation of the proposed performatives, we also performed formal modelling of these performatives using BNF. The primary objective of our research was to provide the negotiation facility to agents, working in an e-commerce domain, in a succinct way to reduce the number of negotiation messages, time consumption and network overhead on the platform. We used an e-commerce based bidding case study among agents to demonstrate the efficiency of our approach. The results showed that there was a lot of reduction in total time required for the bidding process

Sistem Negosiasi Untuk Customer To Customer E-Commercemenggunakan Logika Fuzzy

Negosiasi tradisional terjadi tanpa adanya strategi tawar-menawar dan dilakukan oleh satu penjual dan satu pembeli. Demikian pula,aktifitas negoisai pada e-commerce antara customer dengan customer(C2C e-commerce) lain dilakukan secara off-line,di mana ketersediaanlaman hanya bersifat sebagai media iklan penjualan.Pada saat ini belum tersediasistem e-commerce yang menyediakan fasilitas negosiasi jual-beli barang antar penggunanyayang melibatkan banyak penjual maupun banyak pembeli disertai proses tawar-menawar yang terus berlangsung hingga batas harga kedua belah pihak terpenuhi. Sistem tersebut ini tidak dapat diselesaikan menggunakan metode probabilitas atau aritmatika sederhana karenatidak dapat memodelkan fungsi-fungsi nonlinier yang sangat komplek dan toleran terhadap data yang tidak harus presisi. Dalam penelitian ini, sistem negosiasi C2C e-commerce berbasis logika fuzzydikembangkanuntuk memperoleh sharga negosiasi jual-beli yang dilakukan oleh banyak penjual dan banyak pembeli. Dalam proses negosiasi, tingkat penurunan harga pihak penjual dan tingkat kenaikan harga pihak pembeli dipengaruhi oleh strategi masing-masing pihak. Dengan menggunakan aturan dasar “IF kenaikan harga beli sebesar XTHEN harga jual diturunkan sebesar Y” pada pihak penjual dan “IF harga jual diturunkan sebesar Q THEN harga beli dinaikkan sebesar R”, maka tingkat kenaikan dan penurunan harga yang dijadikan sebagai parameter masukan dari sisten negosiasi dapat ditentukan dengan melibatkan fungsi keanggotaan fuzzy yang terdiri dari nilai rendah, sedang, dan tinggi.Dengan menggunakan fungsi defuzzifikasi, harga negosiasi akhri dapat diperoleh dengan mentransformasikan nilai-nilai fuzzy yang diperoleh selama proses negosiasi. Hasil uji coba sistem negosiasi C2C e-commerceyang dikembangkan menunjukkan bahwa sistem negosiasi terlah dapat melakukan fungsi negosiasi sesuai dengan yang diinginkan. Sistem tersebut memungkinkan semua pengguna melakukan transaksi negosiasi secara individual dengan menerapkan strategi jualbeli. Harga negosiasi ditetapkan oleh agen mediator secara otomatis dengan menggunakan logika fuzzy berdasar strategi yang ditentukan oleh pihak penjual dan pihak pembeli. Negosiasi dapat dilakukan dengan mengacu pada konsep banyak penjual dan banyak pembeli, sehingga masing-masing pihak mendapatkan harga negosiasi untuk barang yang sama dengan harga bervariasi =============================================================================================== Traditional negotiations occur without any bargaining strategy and carried out by one seller and one buyer. Similarly, negotiations on e-commerce, negotiations take place between the customer activity with another customer is done off-line, the website merely as an advertising media sales. As of yet there are e-commerce facilities and selling goods negotiations between customers who are able to produce price negotiations and involves many sellers and buyers so that each party get the best prices on the same goods. Bargaining process continues until the limit price of the two sides met. It can not be solved using the method of probability or arithmetic because it can not model non-linear functions are very complex and tolerance for data that is not appropriate. The process of negotiating the acquisition price can be automatically performed by using fuzzy logic This study uses fuzzy logic to obtain price negotiations by implementing the strategy of buying and selling is done by many sellers and many buyers. The negotiation process requires non-linear functions and tolerance data is not the right price. Rate of decline in the price of the seller and the buyer rate of price increase is influenced by the strategy of each party. By using the basic rules "IF increase in the purchase price by X THEN selling price reduced by Y" on the part of the seller and the "IF the price is lowered by Q THEN purchase price increased by R". Inaccuracy of data lies in the rate of increase and decrease in price is used as input parameters. The rate of increase and decrease in the price used to establish a fuzzy set (low, medium, high), then performed defuzzyfication and inference to obtain price negotiations. Negotiation system customer to customer e-commerce can be used by many sellers and many buyers. Each party get the price negotiation varied so that each party get the best prices on goods negotiated. Price negotiations immediately obtained when the buyer states to negotiate

A Review on MAS-Based Sentiment and Stress Analysis User-Guiding and Risk-Prevention Systems in Social Network Analysis

[EN] In the current world we live immersed in online applications, being one of the most present of them Social Network Sites (SNSs), and different issues arise from this interaction. Therefore, there is a need for research that addresses the potential issues born from the increasing user interaction when navigating. For this reason, in this survey we explore works in the line of prevention of risks that can arise from social interaction in online environments, focusing on works using Multi-Agent System (MAS) technologies. For being able to assess what techniques are available for prevention, works in the detection of sentiment polarity and stress levels of users in SNSs will be reviewed. We review with special attention works using MAS technologies for user recommendation and guiding. Through the analysis of previous approaches on detection of the user state and risk prevention in SNSs we elaborate potential future lines of work that might lead to future applications where users can navigate and interact between each other in a more safe way.This work was funded by the project TIN2017-89156-R of the Spanish government.Aguado-Sarrió, G.; Julian Inglada, VJ.; García-Fornes, A.; Espinosa Minguet, AR. (2020). A Review on MAS-Based Sentiment and Stress Analysis User-Guiding and Risk-Prevention Systems in Social Network Analysis. Applied Sciences. 10(19):1-29. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10196746S1291019Vanderhoven, E., Schellens, T., Vanderlinde, R., & Valcke, M. (2015). Developing educational materials about risks on social network sites: a design based research approach. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64(3), 459-480. doi:10.1007/s11423-015-9415-4Teens and ICT: Risks and Opportunities. 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Collaborative Models for Supply Networks Coordination and Healthcare Consolidation

This work discusses the collaboration framework among different members of two complex systems: supply networks and consolidated healthcare systems. Although existing literature advocates the notion of strategic partnership/cooperation in both supply networks and healthcare systems, there is a dearth of studies quantitatively analyzing the scope of cooperation among the members and its benefit on the global performance. Hence, the first part of this dissertation discusses about two-echelon supply networks and studies the coordination of buyers and suppliers for multi-period procurement process. Viewing the issue from the same angel, the second part studies the coordination framework of hospitals for consolidated healthcare service delivery. Realizing the dynamic nature of information flow and the conflicting objectives of members in supply networks, a two-tier coordination mechanism among buyers and suppliers is modeled. The process begins with the intelligent matching of buyers and suppliers based on the similarity of users profiles. Then, a coordination mechanism for long-term agreements among buyers and suppliers is proposed. The proposed mechanism introduces the importance of strategic buyers for suppliers in modeling and decision making process. To enhance the network utilization, we examine a further collaboration among suppliers where cooperation incurs both cost and benefit. Coalitional game theory is utilized to model suppliers\u27 coalition formation. The efficiency of the proposed approaches is evaluated through simulation studies. We then revisit the common issue, the co-existence of partnership and conflict objectives of members, for consolidated healthcare systems and study the coordination of hospitals such that there is a central referral system to facilitate patients transfer. We consider three main players including physicians, hospitals managers, and the referral system. As a consequence, the interaction within these players will shape the coordinating scheme to improve the overall system performance. To come up with the incentive scheme for physicians and aligning hospitals activities, we define a multi-objective mathematical model and obtain optimal transfer pattern. Using optimal solutions as a baseline, a cooperative game between physicians and the central referral system is defined to coordinate decisions toward system optimality. The efficiency of the proposed approach is examined via a case study

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference: Themes and Impacts

The Bled eConference is the longest-running themed conference associated with the Information Systems discipline. The focus throughout its first quarter-century has been the application of electronic tools, migrating progressively from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Inter-Organisational Systems (IOS) and eCommerce to encompass all aspects of the use of networking facilities in industry and government, and more recently by individuals, groups and society as a whole. This paper reports on an examination of the conference titles and of the titles and abstracts of the 773 refereed papers published in the Proceedings since 1995. This identified a long and strong focus on categories of electronic business and corporate perspectives, which has broadened in recent years to encompass the democratic, the social and the personal. The conference\u27s extend well beyond the papers and their thousands of citations and tens of thousands of downloads. Other impacts have included innovative forms of support for the development of large numbers of graduate students, and the many international research collaborations that have been conceived and developed in a beautiful lake-side setting in Slovenia

Aproximaciones a la aplicación de políticas de consenso en escenarios de negociación automática compleja

En escenarios de negociación complejos es frecuente la negociación de múltiples atributos interdependientes. En la negociación multiatributo es usual que existan distintas ofertas que proporcionen un mismo nivel de utilidad para el agente. Para un agente inmerso en una negociación la selección de una oferta no es trivial. Para llevar a cabo esta selección, un criterio que se suele emplear habitualmente como componente clave en muchos modelos de negociación es el criterio de similaridad. En escenarios con preferencias no monótonas y/o discontinuas este criterio se debilita debido a la ausencia de información suficiente acerca de la estructura de preferencias del oponente. Como primera contribución, esta tesis propone un protocolo de negociación que pueda trabajar de forma eficiente en espacios de utilidad complejos donde la aproximación basada en similaridad falla. En esta tesis se plantean mecanismos de negociación que permiten abordar negociaciones multiatributo complejas con espacios de preferencias no diferenciables. El protocolo propuesto extiende algunos de los principios de la búsqueda basada en patrones para realizar una búsqueda distribuida en el espacio de soluciones. Con objeto de incorporar el principio básico de exploración iterativa por patrones en nuestro protocolo, proponemos pasar de un protocolo de interacción basado en el intercambio de contratos (puntos del espacio de soluciones) a un protocolo basado en el intercambio de regiones. El protocolo define un proceso de exploración conjunta de forma recursiva. Podemos entender este proceso como una contracción iterativa del espacio de soluciones. Una vez que la región sobre la que se realiza la búsqueda es lo suficientemente pequeña como para ser interpretada como si fuera un único contrato, los agentes deciden que la negociación ha terminado. La extensión de los mecanismos de negociación descritos a un entorno de negociación multilateral exige que se incorpore un procedimiento para la agregación de las preferencias de los distintos agentes. En este contexto, y teniendo en cuenta los requisitos de privacidad y escalabilidad de las soluciones, parece natural la utilización de aproximaciones mediadas. En las aproximaciones mediadas, un mediador intenta optimizar algún tipo de métrica del bienestar social. Sin embargo, pocos trabajos han tratado de incorporar algún criterio de bienestar social en el proceso de búsqueda. Para este tipo de escenarios, se hace necesario definir nuevos conceptos de bienestar social. Esta tesis presenta además mecanismos de negociación que permiten incluir en el proceso de búsqueda de acuerdos políticas de consenso, que podrán ser definidas en términos lingüísticos, de forma que es posible especificar el tipo de acuerdo que se persigue. Para validar las contribuciones de la tesis, se ha realizado una evaluación experimental exhaustiva empleando tanto escenarios tipo como escenarios aleatorizados. Los experimentos realizados han confirmado que nuestra propuesta basada en los principios de búsqueda por patrones permite superar las limitaciones de las aproximaciones basadas en similaridad y alcanzar acuerdos consistentes con políticas de consenso definidas en el mediador de forma efectiva, abriendo una nueva línea de trabajo en el ámbito del diseño de mecanismos de negociación automática multilateral de múltiples atributos para espacios de utilidad complejos. Por último, se explora la aplicabilidad de los protocolos de negociación para espacios de utilidad de alta complejidad a escenarios reales. En concreto, se estudia el escenario de asignación de frecuencias en redes inalámbricas Wi-Fi, en el que varios proveedores de red deben acordar la asignación de frecuencias a los puntos de acceso bajo su control. Este trabajo supone la primera aplicación de este tipo de protocolos en entornos reales. Los resultados muestran que es posible alcanzar acuerdos que mejoran los obtenidos por las heurísticas que se emplean actualmente e incluso los conseguidos por optimizadores con información completa