SME Oriented Purchasing Consortium Based on MAS

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have been playing more and more important roles in modern economy. However, only a little attention has been paid to the SME oriented supply chain management research. Purchasing is one of the most important components of supply chain management. To profit from cooperative purchasing, this paper proposes a SME oriented multi-agent system (MAS), which constructs and coordinates a purchasing consortium. And the structure of the MAS and the outline of negotiation process are illustrated in detail. A modified aggregation algorithm based on situation assessment is used in this group decision support system (GDSS), which facilitates the selection of proper suppliers for members of the consortium.