Engineering agent-based information systems: a case study of automatic contract net systems
Résumé
In every business the tender has become an indispensable part to foster the negotiation of new trade agreements. The selection and the attribution are nowadays a long process conducted manually. It is necessary to define criteria for selecting the best offer, evaluate each proposal and negotiate a business contract. In this paper, we present an approach based on agents for the development of an automatic award of contracts (here called Automatic Contract Net Systems). The selection and negotiation are then automatically performed through communication between agents. We focus in this paper on the tendering and selection of the best offer. To facilitate the development of complex systems such as multi-agent systems, we adopt software patterns that will guide the designer in the analysis, design and implementation on an agent-based execution platform.