Automation of negotiations in e-business: Framework, protocol, and system.

摘要

Negotiation plays a critical role in configuring and managing supply chains. As the e-Business environment becomes more pervasive and dynamic, negotiations between companies are required more frequently than ever. Despite its potential value and the progress in research, the adoption of negotiation systems has been slow in practice. My dissertation investigates the automation of business-to-business (B2B) negotiations in the e-Business environment.; Many negotiation models, algorithms, and system architectures were proposed, discussed, and implemented, mostly in the 1990's and beyond. However, most of them have focused on relatively simple type of negotiations such as bilateral negotiation and conventional auctions. B2B negotiations usually are complex and involve multiple parties and multiple issues. The main subject of this dissertation is the system support and automation of such complex B2B negotiations in order to fill the gap between research in academia and the needs in the fields.; The subject is approached from the multi-disciplinary perspective.; First, a framework for e-Negotiation is proposed. The framework can be used to analyze complex negotiations and design negotiation protocols and systems automating them. The value of this framework extends beyond this dissertation as it identifies new research problems that have not been dealt in traditional research on negotiations.; Second, based on the framework, auction-based negotiations are studied. Especially, considering the problems in applying the combinatorial auction to procurement negotiations, I propose a new auction-based procurement negotiation mechanism, named Multi-Component Contingent Auction (MCCA). The MCCA, a superset of the combinatorial auction, provides an auction-based negotiation mechanism to select and coordinate suppliers.; Third, e-Business infrastructures are examined in the context of negotiation automation. In particular, applications of the Web Services technology and the RosettaNet standard to negotiation automation are intensively studied.; Finally, the work is validated through a case study of office interior design and furniture procurement, where the negotiation, catalog, and design collaboration systems are implemented.