Software architecture of the MinneTAC supply-chain trading agent

Abstract

The MinneTAC trading agent is designed to compete in the Supply-Chain Trading Agent Competition. It is also designed to support the needs of a group of researchers, each of whom is interested in different decision problems related to the competition scenario. The design of MinneTAC breaks out each basic behavior into a separate, configurable component, and allows dynamic construction of analysis and modeling tools from small, single-purpose "evaluators". The agent is defined as a set of "roles", and a working agent is one for which a component is supplied for each role. This allows each researcher to focus on a single problem and work independently, and it allows multiple researchers to tackle the same problem in different ways. A working MinneTAC agent is completely defined by a set of configuration files that map the desired roles to the code that implements them, and that set parameters for the components. We describe the design of MinneTAC, and we evaluate its effectiveness in support of our research agenda and its competitiveness in the TAC-SCM game environment.