A life-cycle-oriented agent-based negotiation framework for supply chain management

A new and original agent-based approach for automating buyer-seller negotiations in supply chain management (SCM) is presented in this paper. A life-cycle-oriented agent-based negotiation framework (LCOABN) is designed and implemented to support an entire negotiation life cycle. The proposed multi-agent system consists of 3 sub-systems: case-based preference (strategy) elicitation system, mobile agent-based bargaining system and negotiation experience mining system. They are designed to realize the tasks of three negotiation phases: pre-bargaining phase, bargaining phase and post-bargaining phase. Experimental results show that the overall performance of the proposed system is improved greatly with the introduction of the three-phase negotiation life cycle.