CMU-ISR-08-139
Institute for Software Research
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University



CMU-ISR-08-139

The 2009 Supply Chain Trading Agent Competition
– Procurement Challenge

Michael Benisch, Perry Chu, Ramprasad Ravichandra,
Norman Sadeh, Alberto Sardinha

January 2009

CMU-ISR-08-139.pdf


Keywords: Autonomous agent, electronic commerce, trading agent


This document contains the specifications of the 2009 Supply Chain Trading Agent Competition – Procurement Challenge (SCM-PC-09). The Challenge revolves around a PC assembly scenario, where trading agents developed by different teams compete for components required to assemble different types of PCs. The Challenge requires agents to manage supply chain risk by negotiating long-term, quantity flexible procurement contracts and supplementing these contracts with one-off procurement orders. As such, this challenge complements the current "baseline" TAC-SCM scenario by extending the space of procurement options available to supply chain trading agents. By and large, earlier versions of SCM-PC validated the model and showed that it was a viable scenario [6]. In 2009, we have added a purchase cap that limits the amount a supplier is willing to offer an agent during long-term contract negotiation. This captures the fact that suppliers in practice suppliers like to diversify their customer base, it also helps to discourage monopolostic strategies by agents.

14 pages


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