Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Average Cumulative Difference Between
Delivered and Manufacturable Inventory
80000
70000
SouthamptonSCM
60000
Mr.UMBC
50000
Deep Maize
40000
FreeAgent
30000
UMTac-04
20000
Botticelli
10000
0
1
22 43 64 85 106 127 148 169 190 211
Day
Fig. 3.
The average cumulative difference between components delivered and components that
could potentially be assembled into finished PCs for each agent. High differences indicate that
the agent is missing one or more complementary components (e.g. the agent has no memory
components). The ordering in the legend is the same as the visual ordering in the plot.
striking are the very large unsold inventories held by
Deep Maize
and
Southampton-
SCM
at the end of the game.
Mr.UMBC
also had a substantial unsold inventory, but this
inventory was almost exclusively composed of much cheaper non-CPU components.
Figure 3 gives a more detailed breakdown of inventory management over the course
of the game. The plot shows the difference between the number of components deliv-
ered and the number that could possibly be assembled for sale, emphasizing manage-
ment of the complementarities between components. The bulk of the unsold inventories
could not have been sold due to not having the right combinations of components. The
unsold inventory problem was not very severe for
Mr.UMBC
since it was composed of
cheaper components; this may actually have been a deliberate hedge against production
down time.
Deep Maize
and
SouthamptonSCM
both purchased large quantities of some com-
ponents, but had difficulties obtaining enough complementary components to allow full
production.
SouthamptonSCM
had large differences in the orders it placed early on,
and did not compensate for these disparities later in the game. The imbalances for
Deep Maize
were not quite as large as those for
SouthamptonSCM
, and it was able
to mitigate them to some extent by procuring additional components throughout the
game. However, the agent was very selective about the prices paid for these additional
components (note the low price paid for non-CPUs from Table 3). That
FreeAgent
was very successful with a similar strategy that paid much higher prices for these
