Serial Dictatorship Mechanism for Project Scheduling with Non-Renewable Resources

This paper considers a resource-constrained project scheduling problem with self-interested agents. A novel resource allocation model is presented and studied in a mechanism design setting without money. The novelties and specialties of our contribution include that the nonrenewable resources are supplied at different dates, the jobs requiring the resources are related with precedence relations, and the utilities of the agents are based on the tardiness values of their jobs. We modify a classical scheduling algorithm for implementing the Serial Dictatorship Mechanism, which is then proven to be truthful and Pareto-optimal. Furthermore, the properties of the social welfare are studied

Designing cooperation mechanisms for supply chains

The paper defines generic requirements towards cooperative planning in the nucleus of any supply network that is constituted by a pair of autonomous manufacturer and supplier who possess asymmetric information on demand forecast and costs, respectively. Then a novel way is suggested for investigating this problem by means of the apparatus of mechanism design. The analysis results in some provable generic properties as for efficiency and truthfulness, and shows the impossibility of fair cost and profit sharing. Further on, design principles towards a payment scheme are devised that provide incentive for the partners to cooperate in order to minimize costs. This payment can be considered the price for a flexible supply service. As examples, the generic framework is instantiated with two particular cooperative supply mechanisms

Minimal requirements for ubiquitination mediated regulation of thyroid hormone activation

Activation of thyroxine by outer ring deiodination is the crucial first step of thyroid hormone action. Substrate-induced ubiquitination of type 2 deiodinase (D2) is the most rapid and sensitive mechanism known to regulate thyroid hormone activation. While the molecular machinery responsible for D2 ubiquitination has been extensively studied, the combination of molecular features sufficient and required to allow D2 ubiquitination remained to be determined. To address this question we constructed chimeric deiodinases by introducing different combinations of D2-specific elements into type 1 deiodinase (D1), another member of the deiodinase enzyme family, which however does not undergo ubiquitination in its native form. Studies on the chimeric proteins expressed transiently in HEK-293T cells revealed that combined insertion of the D2-specific instability loop and the K237/K244 D2 ubiquitin-carrier lysines into the corresponding positions of D1 could-not ubiquitinate D1 unless the chimera was directed to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Fluorescence resonance energy transfer measurements demonstrated that the C-terminal globular domain of the ER-directed chimera was able to interact with the E3 ligase subunit WSB1. However, this interaction did not occur between the chimera and the TEB4 E3 ligase although a native D2 could readily interact with the N-terminus of TEB4. In conclusion, insertion of the instability loop and ubiquitin-carrier lysines in combination with direction to the ER are sufficient and required to govern WSB1-mediated ubiquitination of an activating deiodinase enzyme

Cooperative production networks - multiagent modeling and planning

Consumer goods are mainly produced in multiple steps through a long process. These steps are often done by separate, independent production nodes (enterprises), linked by supply chains. The networks of enterprises — where members have their own objectives and act in an autonomous, rational way to reach their goals — can be naturally modeled by agent-based methodology. The inner structure of each enterprise is similar in the sense that it contains separated planning functions (e.g., production-, inventory-, capacity planning). While the operation inside an enterprise can be controlled centrally, the interaction between the nodes could be synchronized only by negotiation and coordination. Coordination can be based on protocols which regulate information, material and financial flows alike. In this paper we expose an agent-based organizational model of production networks and suggest some planning algorithms which can handle the uncertainty of demand. In addition, we outline the first results of our ongoing research, an analysis of the asymmetric information case and an appropriate coordination mechanism

A distributed coordination mechanism for supply networks with asymmetric information

The paper analyses the problem of coordination in supply networks of multiple retailers and a single supplier, where partners have asymmetric, private information of demand and costs. After stating generic requirements like distributedness, truthfulness, efficiency and budget balance, we use the apparatus of mechanism design to devise a coordination mechanism that guarantees the above properties in the network. The resulting protocol is a novel realisation of the widely used Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) where the responsibility of planning is at the supplier. We prove that together with the required generic properties a fair sharing of risks and benefits cannot be guaranteed. We illustrate the general mechanism with a detailed discussion of a specialised version, assuming that inventory planning is done according to the newsvendor model, and explore the operation of this protocol through computational experiments