For any business, procurement costs has a direct and significant impact on profitability that is scaled by the size of the business. Much research focus has been placed on achieving the lowest possible cost for the goods/services purchased. As an alternative, we also consider the operational costs of procurement. The AutONA system was conceived as a means of reducing these operational costs by automating as much of the price negotiation process as possible. Thus, costs of human capital can then be reduced and/or redeployed to other procurement effort such as strategic procurement, which requires higher human involvement. The problem domain has been limited to the automation of multiple 1:1 negotiations over price for quantities of a homogenous good subject to the organization's procurement constraints of target quantity, price ceiling and deadline.
展开▼
