Fuzzy BDI agents for supply chain monitoring in an uncertain environment

ABSTRACT

The monitoring of supply chains (SCs) is a major challenge due to the increasing complexity of the global market, which increases the exposure of monitoring systems to disruptions, caused by technological innovations and consumer needs. Thus, a dynamic behaviour model to incorporate demand uncertainty in the SC of a Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) was designed in the present study. In our system, information uncertainty is modelled in a fuzzy manner based on Belief, Desire and Intention (BDI) architecture. To achieve our objective, we enhance the multi-agent knowledge model of the SC. Our contribution includes the development of a monitoring system. We first propose a dynamic reasoning model of fuzzy BDI agents faced with an uncertain situation. We then describe the collaborative behaviour between the agents of the SMEs. The challenge addressed in this study is how to make beneficial decisions given uncertain information.

KEYWORDS:

• Supply chain
• SME clusters
• BDI agents
• fuzzy logic
• uncertain environment
• monitoring

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aicha Ben Mekki

Aicha Ben Mekki got her Master Degree in 2013 in Artificial Intelligence specialising in Business Intelligence at the Higher Institute of Management of Tunis and worked as a Ph.D. student in IT Management at the same Institute since January 2015. Her research activities mainly concern Supply Chain Management.

Jihène Tounsi

Jihène Tounsi is an assistant professor at Higher Institute of Management of Sousse and Member of the SOIE Laboratory. In 2011, she got her Ph.D. in monitoring of a supply chain based on multi-agent system at the University of Savoie (Grenoble, Paris). Since 2012, she teaches Computer Programming at Higher Institute of Management of Sousse. Her research interests are mainly in multi-agent simulations, performance evaluation and multi-criteria decision-making in supply chain contexts. She has a dozen of scientific papers published in international journals and/or international conferences.

Lamjed Ben Said

Lamjed Ben Said is a Dean of the Higher Institute of Management of Tunis and Head of the SOIE Laboratory. In 2003, he got his Ph.D. in multi-agent simulations at the University Pierre & Marie Curie (Paris VI). His research activities mainly concern the multi-agent simulations, multi-criteria optimisation and metaheuristics. He has more than 50 scientific papers published in international journals and/or international conferences.