在本論文中，我們利用分散限制滿足問題的演算法結合協商機制，設計一套以多重代理人為基礎的協同合作模型，利用這套分散式協同合作模型，以分散式的方式解決供應鏈中的限制滿足問題。在現實商業環境中，受限於商業機密與高額的資訊收集費用，以集中式的方法解決散佈於供應鏈各層級的衝突是不實際且不可行的，因此我們提出以分散式協同合作模型，利用分散式限制滿足問題的理論，以分散式方法解決供應鏈中的衝突。分散式限制滿足問題提供一套完整的演算法，保證我們在有解的情況下能找到一個滿足所有限制的解。利用多重代理人的自主性，我們設計一個協同合作代理人程式，並賦予代理人在分散式環境中解決衝突的能力，我們期望藉由這套多重代理人系統，能強化供應鏈適應環境變動的能力與提高供應鏈的效能。

In this thesis, I propose an agent-based cooperative model for supply chains to commit orders by satisfying constraints. Due to the limitation of the real world environment, the centralized schedule model to handle constraint satisfaction is impractical, it is important to excise the distributed constraint satisfaction model to meet the outsourcing paradigm of supply chain management. I introduce a multi-agent system based coordination mechanism that integrates theories of negotiation and distributed constraint satisfaction problem to resolve the constraints in supply chain. I adopt the asynchronous weak-commitment search, a DCSP algorithm to resolve the global constraint in supply chain. Asynchronous weak-commitment search is complete backtracking algorithms that guarantee to find a solution if there is a solution existing and asynchronous weak-commitment search provide priority dynamic mechanism that help us to find a solution quickly than other backtracking algorithms. We construct a coordination agent for each business entity in supplier chain. The agent embedded in the ability to resolve the constraints autonomously. We expect this agent-based coordination mechanism can make supply chain more efficient and enhance supply chain's agility.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 MOTIVATIONS 2
1.2 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES 3
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 4
2.1 SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT 4
2.2 DISTRIBUTED CONSTRAINT SATISFACTION PROBLEM 5
2.2.1 Algorithms for solving distributed constraint satisfaction problems 8
2.3 NEGOTIATION 10
2.4 MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS 12
2.4.1 FIPA 15
2.4.2 JADE 16
CHAPTER 3 CONSTRUCTING MULTI-AGENT SYSTEM FOR COOPERATIVE SUPPLIER CHAINS TO SOLVE DISTRIBUTED CSP 17
3.1 SUPPLY CHAIN COORDINATION MODEL 17
3.2 TASK REPRESENTATIONS 20
3.3 LOCAL CONSTRAINTS RESOLUTION 24
3.4 GLOBAL CONSTRAINT RESOLUTION 26
CHAPTER 4 THE ELABORATION OF DISTRIBUTED COOPERATIVE MODEL 29
4.1 ALLIANCE FORMATION 29
4.2 CONSTRAINT SATISFACTION 31
4.3 THREE MESSAGE TYPES USED IN THE MODEL 34
4.4 AN EXAMPLE TO SHOW THE PROCESS OF CONSTRAINT SATISFACTION 35
4.5 PSEUDO CODES OF SUPPLY CHAIN CONSTRAINT SATISFACTION ALGORITHMS 40
CHAPTER 5 EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN 43
5.1 EXPERIMENTAL SETTINGS 43
5.2 EXPERIMENTS 47
5.3 FOUR EVALUATION CRITERIA 49
CHAPTER 6 EVALUATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 50
6.1 EVALUATION RESULTS OF THE DISTRIBUTED COORDINATION MODEL 50
6.2 THE EXPLANATION OF EXPERIMENT RESULTS 52
CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK 58
REFERENCE 60

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