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been covered by the RFQs sent. The agent will accept complete offers, earliest complete
offers, or partial offers.
One problem with this strategy is that the virtual production can be unreliable as
suppliers can delay the delivery of components. The gaps produced because of the
initial RFQs can be covered, but new gaps can appear because of the delay of
components.
4.4
Customers and Scheduling
Socrates' customer strategy is simple: it responds to customer RFQs which can be sat-
isfied based on the current inventory of finished PCs. Three different ways of sorting
the customer RFQs were considered and tested during the competition (a) quantity in
RFQ; (b) reservation price; (c) expected profit. The method adopted was (b). Taking
into account the reservation price in each RFQ, Socrates looks at the current inventory
and decides which RFQs to bid for. The offered price depends on a number of factors
including the current date, the quantity held in stock for the particular PC model and
the average price as reported in the market report. These factors determine different
levels of discounts during the game and are cumulative. However, Socrates also keeps
track of how well its sales policy operates during the game by looking at the ratio of
OffersSent/OrdersReceived . If the orders fall below certain thresholds and in combi-
nation with other conditions in the game, a price adjustment mechanism is triggered
which overrides the discount price offered normally to improve Socrates' sales posi-
tion. The delivery of finished PCs is arranged as soon as an order is confirmed by the
customer, thus eliminating penalties. The major shortcoming of this aspect of Socrates
is that future production is not taken into account.
The aim of the production schedule is to utilise the full assembly capacity of ev-
ery TAC day. The agent assembles an almost equal number of PCs of each of the 16
models, provided that there are enough parts in the inventory to do so. If there is a
lack of one or more components, which precludes the manufacturing of some partic-
ular PC models, Socrates adjusts its production so that an equal number of the other
PC models can be manufactured. The production schedule does not take into account
customer demand which is a major shortcoming. One way to address this is to either
look at the customer RFQs and the most wanted or unwanted models of PCs and man-
ufacture less of those, or look at the inventory of current PCs and if the quantities
held reach certain thresholds, the production of those PC models can be temporarily
suspended.
5R su s
The following supplier strategies were developed on top of the MSS strategy:
Multi-Attempt Massive Strategy (MAMS): Tackles problems 1 and 2 by re-sending
those RFQs that did not receive offers or are above the Cut-Off-Date.
Enhanced Multi-Attempt Massive Strategy with Last Ordering (EMAMS-LO): This
strategy works as MAMS, but it also addresses problem (4) by ordering components
towards the end.
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