An ontology based approach to organize multi-agent assisted supply chain negotiations

Effective supply chain management (SCM) comprises activities involving the demand and supply of resources and services. Negotiation is an essential approach to solve conflicting transaction and scheduling problems among supply chain members. The multi-agent system (MAS) technology has provided the potential of automating supply chain negotiations to alleviate human interactions. Software agents are supposed to perform on behalf of their human owners only when equipped with sophisticated negotiation knowledge. To better organize the negotiation knowledge utilized by agents and facilitate agents’ adaptive negotiation decision making ability, an ontology-based approach is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the multi-agent assisted supply chain negotiation scheme is presented to configure the general design components of the negotiation system, covering the agent intelligence modules, the knowledge organization method and the negotiation protocol. Then, the ontology-based negotiation knowledge organization method is specified. The negotiation knowledge is separated into shared negotiation ontology and private negotiation ontology to ensure both the agent communicative interoperability and the privacy of strategic knowledge. Inference rules are defined on top of the private negotiation ontology to guide agents’ reasoning ability. Through this method, agents’ negotiation behaviors will be more adaptive to various negotiation environments utilizing corresponding negotiation knowledge.

► Multi-lateral supply chain negotiations are organized based on a generic buyer–seller agent negotiation scheme.
► The negotiation knowledge is structured through the usage of ontology.
► Shared negotiation ontology is elicited to support communicative interoperability.
► Private negotiation ontology is constructed to ensure the privacy of strategic knowledge.
► Ontological rules are built upon the private negotiation ontology to configure agents’ negotiation behavior.