Abstract
In supply chain management, it is crucial to incorporate the pertinent and timely information on customers into a production resource allocation plan. In this paper, we address a situation where resource shortages may cause unsatisfied demand and the reduction its firm's customer base. We propose a resource allocation system taking advantage of intelligent agent technology. First, the management agent solves a linear program that maximizes the current profit subject to resource constraints. Then, account agents analyze the responses of their customers to possible unsatisfied orders, and participate in an auction process to adjust the preliminary resource allocation plan. We describe the proposed system with an example, and demonstrate its benefits based on a simulation study.
