An agent-based distributed scheduling for military logistics

摘要

There has been a significant increase in the improvement of response to disasters in crisis management supply chain. Due to their sudden occurrence, these disasters require a consequent quick and efficient response that depends on the ability of logistics systems to generate plans under a variety of constraints. The supply chain studied in this work is a crisis management supply chain, composed of several elements such as transportation means, loading units, suppliers, equipment, resources, persons… We propose an innovative method for solving a distributed delivery scheduling problem, based on a multi-agent system, for the delivery of goods (food, water, clothes, etc.) to the areas affected by the disaster. The covered areas are geographically distributed and partitioned into multiple sub-regions. Each area is assigned a delivery scheduling sub problem. By employing a distributed cooperative framework, we achieved an incorporation of various evaluation parameters in the process of scheduling in order to maintain a high level of synchronization of all the supply chain, and so to insure a better response to the crisis.