An agent-based multi-attribute negotiation mechanism for construction, supply chain coordination

Supply chain coordination (SCC) has become one of the critical success factors for Supply chain management to effectively improve the performance of organizations in various industries. SCC refers to the integration of different organizations in a supply chain to. exert their core abilities, to respond the client's needs quickly, to continuously improve their performance, and to enhance their core competitiveness. This research regards the construction supply chain as a typical multi-agent system (CMAS), which includes the specialty agents (contractor agent, designer agent, supplier agent, owner agent) and service agents (coordinator agent, monitor agent, name server agent). Since different members in the construction supply chain have different preferences on the decision attributes (such as cost, time, quality, safety and environment), a multi-attribute negotiation mechanism (MANM) for construction SCC is established by constructing the multi-attribute negotiation model, describing the multi-attribute negotiation process, and designing the multi-attribute negotiation protocol. The establishment of this mechanism is based on negotiation theory and utility theory and aimed at promoting the coordination between specialty agents in CMAS. Finally, a prototype system supporting MANM is developed and tested through a hypothetical construction project. The experiment indicates that MANM provides an effective solution to construction SCC.