Research Of Vendor Selection Based On Agent In Supply Chain Management

In recent years, Multi-Agent technology has been the prosperous research field of Distributed Artificial Intelligence. With autonomous and intelligent characteristics, several agents can collaborate and negotiate with each other to accomplish kinds of corporate tasks efficiently. In supply chain management, it has developed well in the theory of vendor selection criterions, however, little research has been focused on how to utilize information technology to realize automatic vendor selection and improve its selection efficiency. With the trend of economic globalization, manufacturers have a wider range in choosing vendors. So how to select the suitable vendors to be manufacturers' strategic companions, has been the premier condition of efficiently supply chain operation.Based on the analysis of supply chain management and intelligence agent theory, this paper introduces Multi-Agent technology in solving strategic selection of supply chain management, and constructs a supply chain framework based on MAS. Emphases have been put on the combination and work content of manufacturer-agent, vendor-agent, seller-agent and negotiate service center. The operation mechanism of supply chain framework and vendor status are also discussed.This paper describes the concept, characteristic and cooperation basis of strategic companion relationship. Making reference to the development process of strategic companion relationship, this paper utilizes Multi-Agent technology to realize automatic vendor selection. As an emphasis, the negotiate strategy and negotiate flow under multi-factor conditions of manufacturers and vendors are discussed, furthermore, on the basis of the first vendor selection, this paper makes use of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to carry out the second selection to find the appropriate vendors.