Intelligent information sharing among manufacturers in supply networks: supplier selection case

Decision making in highly distributed supply networks has become more complex in globally dynamic markets. Despite extensive previous work on supply network decisions, it is still necessary to develop advanced tools for selective collection, management, and sharing of relevant information. In this research, a new intelligent, distributed, and autonomous information sharing protocol is modelled and applied to analytically determine supplier information sharing among manufacturers. Information sharing with all manufacturers is neither sensible nor realistic, since it requires high communication/implementation costs and cannot guarantee a positive return to all parties. Our Intelligent Supplier Information Sharing (ISIS) protocol supports each manufacturer’s decision-making process on selective information sharing. It does so by analyzing the expected sharing benefit while estimating the value of other parties’ information. Through a negotiation process, the appropriate price for shared information that each manufacturer has to pay is also determined. Numerical examples illustrate the performance of the ISIS protocol. Compared to no sharing and complete sharing of information, selective sharing recommended by ISIS yields relatively higher profits. For the case analyzed, profit increase by ISIS is, on average, 15.5 % higher than with complete information sharing, and this advantage holds even under changing conditions.