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DECENTRALIZED SUPPLY CHAIN FORMATION USING MAX-SUM LOOPY BELIEF PROPAGATION.
- Source :
-
Computational Intelligence . May2013, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p281-309. 29p. - Publication Year :
- 2013
-
Abstract
- Supply chain formation is the process by which a set of producers within a network determine the subset of these producers able to form a chain to supply goods to one or more consumers at the lowest cost. This problem has been tackled in a number of ways, including auctions, negotiations, and argumentation-based approaches. In this paper we show how this problem can be cast as an optimization of a pairwise cost function. Optimizing this class of energy functions is NP-hard but efficient approximations to the global minimum can be obtained using loopy belief propagation (LBP). Here we detail a max-sum LBP-based approach to the supply chain formation problem, involving decentralized message-passing between supply chain participants. Our approach is evaluated against a well-known decentralized double-auction method and an optimal centralized technique, showing several improvements on the auction method: it obtains better solutions for most network instances which allow for competitive equilibrium (Competitive equilibrium in Walsh and Wellman is a set of producer costs which permits a Pareto optimal state in which agents in the allocation receive non-negative surplus and agents not in the allocation would acquire non-positive surplus by participating in the supply chain) while also optimally solving problems where no competitive equilibrium exists, for which the double-auction method frequently produces inefficient solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 08247935
- Volume :
- 29
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Computational Intelligence
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 87453817
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8640.2012.00446.x