MinneTAC Sales Strategies for Supply Chain TAC

Abstract

We describe two sales strategies used by our agent, MinneTAC, for the 2003 Supply Chain Management Trading Agent Competition (TAC SCM). Both strategies estimate, as the game progresses, the probability of receiving a customer order for different prices and compute the expected profit. We empirically analyze the effect of the discount given by suppliers on orders made the first day of the game, and show that in high-demand games there is a strong correlation between the performance of an agent in the game and the offers it receives from suppliers the first day of the game.