Agent-Based Negotiation Protocol for Selecting Transportation Providers in a Retail Company

With the growth of competition between organizations, the need for efficient processes has become critical. Thus, the performance of supply chains has a direct impact on the profitability of organizations. The picture is no different for the retail industry. Among the activities of the supply chain, the role of supplier selection stands out. During selection, the need could arise for stakeholders to negotiate with each other to solve problems. In this context, the use of intelligent agents to automate the process emerges as an important tool to facilitate this activity. This paper puts forward guidelines for drawing up a negotiation model based on agents to deal with the problem of selecting suppliers for a major Brazilian retailer. It is intended to underpin drawing up and applying this framework in the future to solve such problems in the company.