Automated bidding in computational markets: an application in market-based allocation of computing services

Autonomous agents are widely applied to automate interactions in robotics, e.g. for selling and purchasing goods on eBay, and in financial markets, e.g. in the form of quote machines and algorithmic traders. Current research investigates efficient economic mechanisms that fully automate the provisioning and usage processes of Grid-based services. On the one hand, consumers want to allocate resources on demand for their various applications, e.g. data sharing, stream processing, email, business applications and simulations. On the other hand, providers of Grid services want to govern business policies to meet their utilization and profit goals. The above-mentioned processes are not manually manageable, however, because decisions need to be taken within milliseconds. Therefore, such processes have to be automated to minimize human interactions. Hence, market mechanisms and strategic behavior play important roles when it comes to achieving automated and efficient allocation of Grid services. The paper begins by presenting a framework for automated bidding, providing a methodology for the design and implementation of configurable bidding strategies. Second, it presents a novel bidding strategy based on a reinforcement learning technique. This strategy is designed to automate the bid generation processes of consumers and providers in various market mechanisms. Third, the behavior and convergence of the strategy is evaluated in a centralized Continuous Double Auction and a decentralized on-line machine scheduling mechanism against selected benchmark bidding strategies. Fourth, we define a bidding language for communicating consumer and provider preferences to the market as well as report back the match of the market-based allocation process.     

基于SOA架构的航空货运销售代理平台设计与实现

文章根植于航空货运销售代理业务,设计和实现了基于SOA架构的面向航空货运销售全行业、提供完整业务流程的航空货运销售代理平台(iGSA)。平台实现了覆盖国内所有航空公司的运价销售策略数据模型,并以此为基础实现了航空运费和杂费的自动化计算。文章平台支持传统、中性及电子运单的全流程销售业务,可以为广大航空货运销售代理提供丰富、快捷的信息服务。通过开放平台模式,文章平台可以实现销售代理、航空公司、机场货站等航空物流企业相关数据的互联互通,消除信息孤岛,提升整个行业的信息化水平。     

CMieux: Adaptive strategies for competitive supply chain trading

Supply chains are a central element of today’s global economy. Existing management practices consist primarily of static interactions between established partners. Global competition, shorter product life cycles and the emergence of Internet-mediated business solutions create an incentive for exploring more dynamic supply chain practices. The supply chain trading agent competition (TAC SCM) was designed to explore approaches to dynamic supply chain trading between automated software agents. TAC SCM pits trading agents developed by teams from around the world against one another. Each agent is responsible for running the procurement, planning and bidding operations of a PC assembly company, while competing with others for both customer orders and supplies under varying market conditions. This paper presents Carnegie Mellon University’s 2005 TAC SCM entry, the CMieux supply chain trading agent. CMieux implements a novel approach for coordinating supply chain bidding, procurement and planning, with an emphasis on the ability to rapidly adapt to changing market conditions. We present empirical results based on 200 games involving agents entered by 25 different teams during what can be seen as the most competitive phase of the 2005 tournament. Not only did CMieux perform among the top five agents, it significantly outperformed these agents in procurement while matching their bidding performance. We also simulated 40 games against the best publicly available agent binaries. Our results show CMieux has significantly better average overall performance than any of these agents.     

IBIZA: E-market Infrastructure for Custom-built Information Products

The merger of electronic commerce, intelligent agent and distributed computing technologies over TCP/IP-based platforms enables the creation of electronic markets in new types of products featuring both human and software agents as actors. One such example is a market in custom-built information products. These are information products that have been constructed to meet specific requirements provided by the consumer. Examples include custom research reports, analysis, and computational objects. How should these markets be designed? What are the market mechanisms that should be used to coordinate the interactions between the actors? What should be the decision strategies employed by the software agents that participate in the market? IBIZA is a computational workbench that enables designers to create and simulate electronic markets in information products. It provides a repository of software agents, bidding strategies, brokering strategies and market mechanisms. Using the repository, designers can instantiate particular designs of electronic markets and conduct experiments to study the impact of design decisions on desired objectives. In this paper, we focus on the key technical and economic issues encountered in the design of IBIZA. We illustrate using examples from our work on designing a software agent-based electronic market for automated model development.     

道路运输物流信息平台的设计与实现

根据现有道路运输物流企业的业务运作模式和道路运输物流信息平台的最终效果,该文构建道路运输物流所涉及的物流资源领域、仓储业务领域、运输业务领域和配送业务领域的业务模型,设计合理的道路运输物流信息资源数据中心和平台模块结构,借助ASP.NET对平台进行了3层架构部署,总结良好的软件设计及开发思路,并为平台运行所需的最终软硬件环境的实现提供了可行的解决方案。     

铁路物流企业信息平台的研究与构建

相比其他物流企业,铁路物流企业更需要建立信息平台来增强物流业务的整合能力,准确掌握运输生产信息,并充分共享铁路运输管理信息系统(TMIS)提供的具有核心竞争力的资源。结合现代物流信息系统理论,针对铁路物流企业的特点,研究并构建了铁路物流企业信息平台,对该平台的系统结构、逻辑结构和网络结构等进行了详细设计和实现。     

基于计算物流的自动化集装箱码头AGV生产调度

针对自动化集装箱码头自动导引车（Automatic Guided Vehicle,AGV）在线实时生产调度约束动态复杂和难以可视化的问题,本文在计算物流框架下,利用AnyLogic平台创建自动化码头水平运输计算实验模型并针对平台中已有的经典资源分配策略,面向AGV生产调度提出两方面的改进。一、将运筹规划商业求解器与计算实验平台结合求解动态复杂组合优化问题;二、基于计算物流的思想方法,迁移和定制出五种面向问题探索的自定义AGV在线调度算法。由于商业求解器的局限性,模型和实验数据是基于自动化码头进口箱作业部分。实验表明,两种改进策略能够弥补商业求解器和计算实验平台的部分不足,尤其是自定义策略相较于经典资源分配策略能够面向特定装卸船需求更好地实现AGV生产调度,实现自动化码头水平运输的高效作业。     

Supply web co-ordination by an agent-based trading network with integrated logistics services

B2B interactions, like electronic negotiations and auctions between suppliers and customers, could be significantly improved by enabling the participants to adapt their bidding strategies to current logistics information (e.g., about transportation condition, cost or dates) while the negotiation goes on. We present an approach of an agent-based information and trading network (ITN) called CASA for dynamic production and sales of timber; the integrated services for logistics and e-commerce are efficiently coordinated by appropriate types of holonic structured intelligent agents of the network. We introduce the agent-based architecture and describe how the agents build their plans and optimize them afterwards. For optimizing their plans, the agents use various market-based negotiation mechanisms, i.e., several auction mechanisms and the simulated trading mechanism described in detail in this article. The effects of the different mechanisms on resulting cost and surplus have been evaluated by various simulation runs in different competitive and co-operative settings. It turned out that the simulated trading mechanism as well as matrix auction mechanisms for two or three items are especially suitable for supply web co-ordination and optimization tasks.     

基于Windows服务的粮食物流短信服务平台的构建

针对粮食物流中的车辆调度管理和数据实时传输的问题,本文提出一种把短息技术SMS(Short Messaging Service,简称SMS)应用到粮食物流管理信息系统中的方法。本文采用Windows服务技术构建了一个粮食物流短信服务平台,给出了构建过程中的关键问题和设计思路,研究SMS在粮食物流管理信息系统中应用的关键技术,从而实现通过SMS对运粮车辆的调度管理、作业信息管理和实时监控。通过试点应用表明,该方法能够方便、有效、及时地对粮食物流信息进行采集、传输与管理。最后,总结了基于Windows服务的短信服务平台的特点及应用前景。     

基于JADE的企业商务智能服务代理平台

为解决电子商务平台在异构和分布环境下计算实体的协作和协调、快速有效的信息收集及平台的智能化等问题,提出基于移动Agent在JADE上的企业商务智能服务代理平台体系结构模型和实现方法,给出基于多移动Agent的商务服务竞标算法流程和服务实体的行为交互过程,结合实际的应用验证,表明该服务代理平台系统在实际应用中的可行性与有效性。     

Autonomous Mapping of E-Business Demands and Supplies via Invisible Internet Agents

In business Internet-based systems demands and supplies can be hidden in different forms and locations. We develop a simple type of agents called knowledgeable objects for carrying and mapping heterogeneous and distributed business data in a self-processing way. Internet agents coordinate these invisible agent objects to implement a competitive mapping via agent bidding. Interval-valued numbers and fuzzy ranking are utilized for representing and clustering dynamic business data. The concept of agent awareness and invisibility is used for regulating agent interaction scope to decrease mapping time and to accord with system capacity. Our analysis shows that this combination of agent-interval-based techniques not only meets the distributed, heterogeneous, and dynamic tendencies of E-business systems but also makes the mapping process more autonomous and efficient.     

一种面向业务承接的物流优化问题研究

传统的物流优化都是在运输公司已经承接了业务的前提下,通过优化方法求解最优运输方案.该文着重研究如何在众多运输任务中求取那些使运输公司获利最大的运输任务,进而判断承接哪些业务.在物流中心发布的运输业务和运输车辆比较少的情况下,决策者可以根据经验来判断承接哪些业务.但当运输业务和运输车辆比较多的时候,依靠经验来判断承接哪些业务已经不能保证决策的正确性.本文先对这种面向业务承接的物流优化问题进行建模,然后采用遗传算法求解,最后采用一个简单的例子进行了仿真验证.     

物流运输配送Intranet平台设计

随着社会对物流需求的增加以及信息化进程的加快,物流企业的信息化已经成为企业优化服务质量、提高竞争优势的重要手段。而我国目前大多物流企业缺乏一套功能健全的运输配送系统软件,并且没有很好的先例进行借鉴。因此,开发出一套完善的运输配送系统Intranet平台软件,对提高物流企业作业效率,降低作业成本从而实现对企业的信息化管理具有重要意义。针对中国物流企业面临的这一尴尬现状,本文着重了解运输配送系统平台软件运作的基础上,通过开发设计出物流运输配送系统Intranet平台软件以实现对运输配送系统中的运输、配送、出入库、仓储等的有效管理,达到提高有效管理企业资源效率的目的。     

Parallel planning via the distribution of operators

This paper describes Operator Distribution Method for parallel Planning (ODMP), a parallelization method for efficient heuristic planning. The method innovates in that it parallelizes the application of the available operators to the current state and the evaluation of the successor states using the heuristic function. In order to achieve better load balancing and a lift in the scalability of the algorithm, the operator set is initially enlarged, by grounding the first argument of each operator. Additional load balancing is achieved through the reordering of the operator set, based on the expected amount of imposed work. ODMP is effective for heuristic planners, but it can be applied to planners that embody other search strategies as well. It has been applied to GRT, a domain-independent heuristic planner, and CL, a heuristic planner for simple logistics problems, and has been thoroughly tested on a set of logistics problems adopted from the AIPS-98 planning competition, giving quite promising results.     

物流配送与运输企业业务处理系统设计

物流配送与运输企业业务处理系统针对典型物流配送企业的业务过程展开设计,能够帮助企业实现对物流全过程的优化调度和动态控制,实现了高效、实用、技术的物流配送与运输管理。系统采用C/S设计模式,设计时充分考虑系统的扩展性和可维护性。     

面向公路物流运输企业的GIS监管系统

基于实验室"物流运输GIS解决方案"项目,针对辽宁省某公路物流运输企业的业务流程,设计了一种面向公路物流运输企业的GIS监管系统.描述了该系统所采用的框架结构,介绍了系统的概述、功能模块划分,阐述了核心模块事件驱动的实现流程,并对高并发情况下的数据通讯连接处理、数据处理过程进行了详细探讨.     

The supply chain trading agent competition

Supply chain management deals with the planning and coordination of bidding, production, sourcing and procurement activities associated with one or more products. It is central to today’s global economy, leading to trillions of dollars in annual transactions worldwide. With the emergence of electronic marketplaces, it is only natural to seek automated solutions that are capable of rapidly evaluating a large number of bidding, sourcing and procurement options. In this paper, we detail a game we have designed to promote the research and evaluation of such solutions under realistic conditions. The game requires agents to manage the assembly of PCs, while competing with one another both for customer orders and for key components. We discuss how the game captures the complexity, stochasticity and competitive nature inherent to supply chain environments. A Web-based multi-agent simulation platform developed for the game was implemented in 2003 and validated in the context of the first Supply Chain Management Trading Agent Competition (TAC-SCM). A total of 20 teams from around the world competed with one another. We review agent strategies developed by different teams and discuss the merits of competition-based research over more traditional research methodologies in this area.     

省级物流信息平台的规划研究

物流信息平台是以服务物流为主要目的的网络信息交互平台及相关业务系统的综合信息服务平台。它通过提供基础平台建立合作机制,对物流相关行业的信息进行融合,实现行业主管部门与企业、企业与企业间计算机业务系统的信息交换;同时,它可促进行业协同运作,提高工作效率,降低作业成本,为行业管理部门提供信息支持,为平台的使用者提供一体化的物流信息服务。     

Large-scale coordination: developing a framework to evaluate socio-technical and collaborative issues

Collaborative logistics, logistics-based networks, focused logistics, and distributed adaptive logistics refer to innovative approaches to logistics planning/execution encompassing automated, adaptive technologies, and proactive human collaboration. Because these approaches are collaborative and distributed in nature, they create novel challenges for coordination and collaboration within socio-technical systems, which encompass the collaborative technologies, the people or machines engaged in collaboration, and the social context of collaboration and coordination. The present challenges need to be met by theoretical models incorporating multidisciplinary perspectives in the study of collaboration. The current paper introduces a collaboration framework which may inform the design and implementation of collaborative technologies and systems, to include distributed logistics teams, from a socio-technical perspective.