Multiagent Based Simulation Tool for Transportation and Logistics Decision Support

Abstract

A transportation and logistics domain belongs to complex problems domains because there are many geographically distributed companies who may enter or leave the system at any time. Analysis of the great number of publications reveals that although traditional mathematical modelling and simulation techniques still dominate, new approaches start to appear. Agent technologies and multiagent systems emerge into transportation and logistics domain only recently. The paper proposes the developed multiagent based simulation tool for decision support in transportation and logistics domain. The multiagent system consists from clients’ agents and logistics companies agents which may participate in four types of auctions, namely, English auction, Dutch auction, First-price sealed-bid auction and Vickrey auction. A client is an auctioneer who is making decision about the best offer of delivering goods. The simulation tool is implemented using Borland C++ Builder and MS Access database.