Strategies for agents participating in combinatorial auctions in the transportation planning of oil derivatives

Abstract

Recent researches have shown that approaches based on the multiagent paradigm and market mechanisms like auctions are efficient in solving planning problems in supply chains (SC), which is characterised as a network of producers and consumers that enables gathering of raw materials, their transformation into products, and their distribution through the system. This paper uses the combinatorial auction mechanism, the multiagent paradigm, and heuristic strategies for SC agents take the decision of participating or not in auctions in order to negotiate and provide feasible solutions to the problem of transportation planning of oil derivatives. The main objective is to enlarge the scope of the application of combinatorial auctions in planning problems calculating them efficiently.