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A Multi-agent Based Approach to the Inventory Routing Problem

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PRICAI 2002: Trends in Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2417))

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Abstract

We propose a multi-agent framework for modeling and solving a complex logistic optimization problems called the Inventory Routing Problem (IRP). We use agents to represent the entities (customers, routes, deliveries) in the IRP. While each agent is driven by its own local objective functions and operations (actions), they also interact with each other. Thus, they cooperate and, at the same time, compete with each other for resources. In this way, our multi-agent framework allows us to capture the coopetitive (cooperation and competition) nature of the global optimization in the IRP. Our experimental results show that this approach is competitive against well-known methods on published benchmarks for the IRP.

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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Lao, Y., Leong, H.W. (2002). A Multi-agent Based Approach to the Inventory Routing Problem. In: Ishizuka, M., Sattar, A. (eds) PRICAI 2002: Trends in Artificial Intelligence. PRICAI 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2417. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45683-X_38

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45683-X_38

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-44038-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45683-4

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