• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.8B no.6
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• pp.601-608
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• 2001

The automated assignment of multiple tasks to executing agents is a key problem in the area of multi-agent systems. In many domains, significant savings can be achieved by reallocating tasks among agents with different costs for handling tasks. The automation of task reallocation among self-interested agents requires that the individual agents use a common negotiation protocol that prescribes how they have to interact in order to come to an agreement on "who does what". In this paper, we introduce the multi-agent Traveling Salesman Problem(TSP) as an example of task reallocation problem, and suggest the Vickery auction as an interagent negotiation protocol for solving this problem. In general, auction-based protocols show several advantageous features: they are easily implementable, they enforce an efficient assignment process, and they guarantce an agreement even in scenarios in which the agents possess only very little domain-specific Knowledge. Furthermore Vickrey auctions have the additional advantage that each interested agent bids only once and that the dominant strategy is to bid one′s true valuation. In order to apply this market-based protocol into task reallocation among self-interested agents, we define the profit of each agent, the goal of negotiation, tasks to be traded out through auctions, the bidding strategy, and the sequence of auctions. Through several experiments with sample multi-agent TSPs, we show that the task allocation can improve monotonically at each step and then finally an optimal task allocation can be found with this protocol.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.76-84
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• 2003

Software agents reduce human involvement to a certain extent by automating routine tasks. However, most of agents have assisted with only a few steps in the multi-steps process of electronic transactions. In order to help users with the important steps in the electronic transactions, software agents need to persuade other parties to act in particular ways. While negotiations have many shapes and forms, this paper focuses on a particular class of negotiation, that is competitive business environment based negotiation. For negotiation with other parties in this contort, it is necessary for autonomous agents to consider environmental variables-the number of competitors, the number of negotiation parties, the maximum time by which they must finish their jobs, and user's preferences. Previous negotiation decision functions for the automated negotiation have used only time or the static numbs of negotiating parties as negotiation criteria, although competitive business environment should include potential competitors who can snatch negotiation parties away. This paper attempts to evaluate the performance of a negotiation decision function that considers the potential competitors in competitive market environment as well as that of a negotiation decision function that does not. For this evaluation, this study adopts the electronic marketplace as an application domain because many buyers and sellers compete for limited resources in the marketplace.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.47-63
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• 2004

Today, there are several markets in cyber space where companies trade electronically due to the development of Information Technology. On the other hand, the most important thing in trades is negotiation. So, in order to support current business practices as well as new ones on the Internet, electronic commerce systems need an ability to negotiate. In this paper, proposed is a method by which a seller can be supported by an agent which plays a role in negotiation process among small and medium companies especially injection mold manufacturer. If the manufacturing capacity cannot afford to produce all orders, the manufacturer may want to extend due dates and the buyers may want to discount prices. The negotiation agent discussed in this paper cooperates with the schedule agent to get due-date information, and performs a role in one (seller)-to-many (buyer) negotiation processes.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.193-213
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• 2002

The sales activity of most of small manufacturing companies is based on orders of buyers. The process of promotion, negotiation, receipt and selection of orders of the manufacturers is closely coupled with the load status of the production lines. The decision on whether to accept an order or not, or the selection of optimal order set among excessive orders is entirely dependent on the schedule of production lines. However, in the real world, since the production scheduling activity is mainly performed by human experts, most of small manufacturers are suffer from being unable to meet due dates, lack of rapid decision on the acceptance of new order. Recently, Internet based Electronic Commerce is recognized as one of the alternatives for strengthening sales power of small and medium companies. However, small and medium manufacturers can't adjust properly to the new environment because they are in short of money, personnel, and technology. To cope with this problem, this paper deals with development of part sales agent coupled with virtual manufacturing in Internet environment that consist of selection agent, advertisement agent, selection agent, negotiation agent, and virtual manufacturing system. This paper develops a time-bounded negotiation mechanism for small and medium manufacturers in agent-based automated negotiation between customers and negotiation agents. Furthermore, to select optimal order set maximized profit, we first formulate the order selection problem with mixed integer programming, but the computation time of IP is not acceptable for real world scale problem. To overcome this problem and dynamic nature of virtual manufacturing, we suggest a genetic algorithm approach, which shows a reasonable computation time for real world case and good incremental problem solving capability.

• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.19-51
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• 1996

We suggest a distributed framework for task assignment in the computer-controlled shop floor where each of the resource agents and part agents acts like an independent profit maker. The job allocation problem is formulated as a linear programming problem. The LP formulation is analyzed to provide a rationale for the distributed task assignment procedure. We suggest an auction based negotiation procedure including a price-based bid construction and a price revising mechanism. The performance of the suggested procedure is compared with those of an LP formulation and conventional dispatching procedures by simulation experiments.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.63-78
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• 1999

협상은 상거래에 있어서 매우 중요한 요소 중 하나이다. 현재의 웹 기반 전자상거래 시스템은 이러한 중요한 협상 구조를 상거래에 잘 반영하지 못하는 문제점을 가지고 있다. 이러한 문제점중 기업과 소비자간의 미비한 협상 구조를 보안하기 위해 실세계 상거래에서 존재하는 점원을 전자상거래상의 가상점원으로 모델링하여 회사의 정책과 구매자의 특성을 반영하여 구매자와 전략적으로 자동 협상을 수행할 수 있는 에이전트의 구조를 설계하고 구현하였다. 협상은 매우 복잡한 구조를 가지고 있다. 이러한 협상 구조를 지원하기 위해서는 상호간의 제안을 표현하고, 그 제안에 대한 평가 내용과 결정사항을 전달할 수 있는 언어적인 구조가 필요하며, 협상의 대상이 되는 사안들의 특성을 반영할 수 있는 표현 구조도 요구된다. 또한 이러한 협상에서 전략을 세우고 알맞은 제안을 제시하며 상대의 제안에 대하여 전략적으로 반응할 수 있는 의사결정 모델이 요구된다. 본 논문에서는 회사의 정책 모델과 구매자의 모델을 정의하고 이를 이용한 협상 모델을 설계 구현하였다. 협상 구조의 모델링을 위해 KQML(Knowledge Query Manipulation Language)을 기반으로 전자상거래 프로토콜로 설계하고, 논쟁 기반 협상 모델을 기초로 협상언로를 설계하였다. 또한 협상에서의 전략적인 의사결정을 위해 게임이론을 이용하고, 규칙 기반 시스템으로 이를 보충하였다. 마지막으로 가상점원 모델을 바탕으로 조립 컴퓨터 판매를 위한 가상점원을 구현하였고, 이에 대한 실험을 통하여 가상점원의 유용성을 보였다.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.4282-4290
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• 2010

Recently, business environment is spreading from singular business to supply-chain problem. SCM(Supply Chain Management) is changing from closed and static to opened and dynamic environment, so these environment changes of SCM require to enterprise different approach than past. As supply chain is becoming opened and dynamic, a claim is being naming that converse of real-time the get reaction from to recognizing the level of supply chain problem, grope of alternative plan to solving this problem and choosing optimum alternative plan raise the enterprise competitive. But until present, the research to deal with these changes of SCM is on insufficient situation. Thus in this paper proposes the agent system by a way of realizing dynamic supply chain. The agent is going to accomplish the management activities in real-time depends on environment and given condition and designed for solving problems development and maintenance. Also, algorithms performance of the agent is tested on TAC SCM environment. Agents in TAC SCM are simulations of small manufacturers, who must compete with each other for both supplies and customers, and manage inventories and production facilities.

• Proceedings of the Korea Association of Information Systems Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.109-121
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• 2004

현재 오프라인에서 행해지고 있는 거래들을 온라인에서 지원하기 위란 거래 시스템에 대한 연구들이 많이 진행되고 있다. 하지만 이러한 거래 시스템들은 일반적인 상거래, 즉 판매자가 제시한 가격에 구매자가 구매를 하는 고정가격제 거래방식을 지원하는 시스템이 대부분 이었고 판매자와 구매자가 협상을 통해 적절한 가격선을 찾을 수 있도록 지원해 주는 거래 시스템에 대한 연구는 미흡하다. 이러한 자동 협상 시스템은 전자상거래 환경에서의 다양한 환경변화와 복잡한 문제 등에 보다 빠르고 유연하게 대처하고 많은 협상을 일관성있고 효율적으로 수행하기 위해서 필요하다. 본 연구에서는 전자상거래 환경에서 자동으로 협상을 수행하는 자동협상시스템을 개발하였다. 이 시스템은 협상안을 자동으로 생성하고, 또한 상대방의 협상안을 평가하여 Counter 협상안을 작성${\cdot}$전송하거나 Accept 또는 Reject를 할 수 있는 멀티 에이전트 기반 자동협상 시스템이다.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.53-62
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• 2003

Current P2P (Peer-to-Peer) applications have the limited functions such as file search and transfer between peers and have the limitations such as trust problem on search results, copyright problem, and profitable business model problem. For a P2P application to be used as a business platform for the distribution of various multimedia contents, this paper proposes an extended P2P application architecture and its prototype system including distributed collaborative filtering, automated price negotiation system, and payment mechanism.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.129-136
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• 2012

This study proposes a collaboration system framework on the web service in a supply chain to implement an efficient virtual supply chain and improve an ability to fulfill received orders over a supply chain. The system based on the framework proposed in this paper plays an important role for automatic order negotiation and placing/receiving an order noticed in web service by the main system. Furthermore, it can evaluate the fulfillment of received orders over a supply chain by using the transaction results from hierarchically related vendors and establish efficient manufacturing plans. In a word, this system is the automated system for creating manufacturing plans, placing and receiving orders. A little more important main function of this system is that it has a dynamic evaluation capability about fulfillment with received orders over a supply chain, and improves the evaluation method of fulfillment ability with received orders with related to direct dealing vendors, which is a main problem in existing system. As a result, this system is able to reduce the work load of the sales and purchasing materials, production control division, to manage accurate inventory promptly, to maintain the optimal inventory level by analyzing the information of fulfillment ability with received orders, and to enhance the level of service for customers.