Intelligent Selection of Distributor by Manufacturer in Supply Chain ...

Gurmeet Kaur et al ,Int.J.Computer Technology & Applications,Vol 3 (3), 1002-1007 

ISSN:2229-6093 

Intelligent Selection of Distributor by Manufacturer in Supply Chain 

Management using Multi Agents 

Gurmeet Kaur 

Department of Computer Science 

and Engineering 

Lovely Professional University 

Phagwara (Punjab) 

gurmeetkaurvirdi@gmail.com 

Dr. Babita Pandey 

Department of Computer Science 

and Engineering 

Lovely Professional University 

Phagwara (Punjab) 

Abstract 

Supply chain management (SCM) consists of 

various components such as: supplier, 

manufacturer, factories, warehouses, distributions 

agents etc. These components are involved in 

various activities such as: supplying raw 

materials, manufacturing and distribution of the 

finished product to the final customer. The 

selection of right distributor is very important 

activity in SCM. This paper focuses on the Multi 

Agent technique for the selection of suitable 

distributor for the manufacturer. Different 

manufacturers have different preferences on the 

attributes like payment delay, market coverage, 

technical ability etc. The supply chain consists of 

an intelligent Broker agent which selects the best 

distributor according to the requirement of the 

manufacturer. The multi agent system offers a 

flexible solution for the selection as well as 

negotiation. The agents are implemented through 

the Jade environment. 

Keywords 

Supply Chain Management (SCM), Agent, Java 

Application Development Environment (Jade), 

selection, negotiation 

1. Introduction 

The distributor’s selection has a large impact in 

the supply chain management (SCM). SCM 

consists of various components such as: supplier, 

manufacturer, factories, warehouses, distributions 

agents etc. These components are involved in 

various activities such as: supplying raw materials, 

manufacturing and distribution of the finished 

product to the final customer. The selection of 

right distributor is very important activity in SCM. 

Very few researchers have worked on the selection 

of distributor in SCM such as: Zou et al. [1] 

deployed rough set theory to deal with the 

qualitative data and modified it for preferred 

distributor selection. They derived certain decision 

rules which facilitated distributor selection. They 

generated several rules for distributors’ evaluation 

and selection. They showed the importance of the 

relationship intensity, marketing experience and 

the management ability in selecting the 

distributors. Reddy et al. [2] deployed fuzzy goal 

programming approach for quota allocation to 

distributors of the supply chain. Many of the 

researchers have also worked on the selection of 

supplier in SCM. Mian [3] divided the multiattributes 

of supplier into two categories by fuzzy 

IJCTA | MAY-JUNE 2012 

Available online@www.ijcta.com 

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ISSN:2229-6093 

and certainty properties, and used multi-Agent 

technology to make supplier selection decision 

intelligent. Kumar et al. [4] introduced a method 

of supplier selection based on multi agent and 

fuzzy decision making techniques include with 

risk factor for the selection of supplier. Lin and He 

[5] defined the concepts of construction supply 

chain and construction supply chain. They 

proposed to resolve the problem in SCM by 

constructing an agent-based framework for 

construction supply chain coordination based on 

the agent technology and multi-attribute 

negotiation and utility theory.We propose agent 

based approach for the selection of distributor. The 

distributor is selected on the basis of multi 

attributes. Different manufacturer have their 

different needs. We are using these attributes to 

match the manufacturers’ and distributors’ 

profiles. The broker agent is responsible for 

matching the profiles of manufacturer and 

distributor. We aim to implement a method of 

selection of distributor using the multi agent 

approach. The agents are developed using JADE 

(Java Agent Development Environment). 

The organization of the paper is as follows: 

Section 2 gives the overview of the methodology 

used in the development of proposed multi agent 

system. In section 3, we have explained the 

different agents in the multi agent system. Section 

4 represents the implementation details and section 

5 includes the conclusions. 

2. Methodology 

The selection of distributor consists of three 

steps: registration, Evaluation and Filtering. 

In the first stage registration of the distributor, 

manufacturer and Broker agent to the DF agent is 

done in the jade environment. After that the 

manufacturer and the distributor send their 

advertisements to the broker agent. The 

advertisement consists of a list of specific 

attributes and each attribute has a 

weight attached to it. 

The attributes are [1] Payment delay (PD), 

Market coverage (MC), Order Quality (OQ), Cost 

Control (CC), Technical Ability (TA), Shipments 

(SH), Marketing Experience (ME), Relationship 

Intensity (RI), Financial Strength (FS), Logistic 

1.Request 

DF Agent 

1.Request 

2.Inform 

4. Call for proposals from 

the Distributor agents for 

the product. 

2.Inform 

1.Request 

2.Inform 

Distributor 

Agent 

5.Send attributes value 

7.accept/reject proposal 

Broker Agent 

(6. do the matching of 

attributes of the 

Distributor agent and 

manufacturer agent) 

3.Send product id 

and attributes 

Manufacturer Agents 

8. inform agent 

Figure 1: Selection of distributer 



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Capability (LC), Infrastructure and Equipment 

(IE) and Marketing capability (MR) with values 

from 1 (low) to 3 (high). 

The broker agent find the difference between the 

manufacturers’ attributes and various distributers’ 

attributes according to equation1. 

D j = 

…….(1) 

Where M i is the ith Attribute of the 

manufacturer and D ij is the ith attribute of jth 

Distributer. Then it selects the best distributor 

(BD) which has minimum sum of difference (D j ) 

with the attributes wanted by the manufacturer 

(using equation2). 

BD= min (D 1 ,D 2 ,......,D n ).........(2) 

All the work of matching of profiles is done by 

the Broker. The whole process is summarised in 

the figure 1. 

interface. The following Graphical user interfaces 

are made to enter the attributes by the 

manufacturer and by the Distributor. The 

distributor is chosen on the basis of these 

attributes. 

3. Multi agent System 

We have made three types of agents: 

3.1. Manufacturer Agent: The manufacturer 

agent does the work on behalf of the 

manufacturer. It tries to supply the various 

products to the Distributors. 

3.2. Distributor Agent: The distributor agent is 

responsible for distributing the product. It gets 

the desired product from the 

manufacturer. 

3.3. Broker Agent: This agent is responsible for 

the overall selection of the best distributor for 

the manufacturer by matching their profiles. 

4. Implementation 

4.1. Development of the Manufacturer and 

Distributor Gui:- 

The manufacturer and the distributor agents can 

enter the value to the attributes by a user 

Figure 2: Distributor GUI 

Figure 3: Manufacturer GUI 

4.2. Selection of Best Distributer 

The Broker Agent get the attributes from the 

Manufacturer agents and the distributor agents. 



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ISSN:2229-6093 

Then after taking all the inputs the broker 

evaluates the Differences between the profiles of 

a particular manufacturer Agent and the Various 

Distributor Agents. The broker then compares the 

attributer provided by the manufacturer and the 

Distributor and selects the most appropriate 

Distributor. From the table1 as the sum of 

differences of Manufacturer and distributer1 is 5 

which is less than the sum of difference of 

manufacturer and Distributer2, so the 

Distributor1 is selected by the broker agent. 

The figure 4 shows the complete 

communication is done between the 

manufacturer, Distributor and the broker 

Agents during the selection of the distributer. 

Table 1: Comparison of Distributor and Manufacturer Agents 

Attributes PD MC OQ CC TA SH ME RI FS LC IE MR SD 

Manufacturer L M H M H H M H M M L M 

Distributer1 M M M M H M M L M M L M 

Distributer2 L M L M M H H M L M M M 

D1(integer value) 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 5 

D2(integer value) 0 0 2 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 7 

L=Low, M=Medium, H=High and SD=sum of 

difference 

In the table, the value high is taken as 3, 

medium=2 and low =1. 

4.3. Negotiation among the broker and the 

distributor: 

After selection of the most suitable distributor, 

now the broker does the negotiation on behalf of 

the manufacturer. As the broker has the price that 

the manufacturer expects from the distributor and 

also it provides the limit (here we have taken the 

limit 20% of the price given by manufacturer) up 

to which it can increase its range in accordance to 

the best distributor. 

Broker compares the prices of distributor and the 

manufacturer and again proposes the distributor 

to lower its price (negotiation) if it is greater than 

the price + limit provided by the manufacturer. 

When the negotiation is complete, the broker 

send accept proposal message to the distributor 

for the final acknowledgement the distributor 

Figure 4: Sniffer Agent (Selection process of distributor) 



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send a inform message. 

The flow diagram(figure 5 ) shows the algorithm 

used for negotiation process. When the best 

distributor comes to know that it has been 

selected by the broker for the distribution of a 

particular product (by getting a propose message 

from the broker) then it reply with price that he 

wants for keeping the product. 

The figure 6 shows the messages exchanged 

between Distributor, manufacturer and the broker 

Start 

Get mprice 

Get dprice 

Calculate limit=mprice*(20/100) 

Calculate difference=dpricemprice 

False 

If 

D


ISSN:2229-6093 

References 

[1]Zhonghai Zou, Tzu-Liang Tseng, Hansuk Sohn, 

Guofang Song and Rafael Gutierrez (2011) “A 

Rough Set Based Approach to Distributor 

Selection in Supply Chain Management” Elsevier 

Ltd. ©2011 

[2]B.Chandra Mohana Reddy, K. Hemachandra 

Reddy , C. Nadha Muni Reddy and K.Vijaya 

Kumar Reddy “Quota Allocation to Distributors of 

the Supply Chain under Distributors’ Uncertainty 

and Demand Uncertainty by Using Fuzzy Goal 

Programming” Jordan Journal of Mechanical and 

Industrial Engineering Volume 2, Number 4, 

December. 2008. 

[3]Wang Mia (2011) “Comprehensive evaluation 

and selection model of supplier under E-business” 

IEEE 978-1-4244-8673-0 @ 2011 

[4]Vivek Kumar , Dr. S. Srinivasan and Dr. 

Subhra Das (2011) “A Multi-Agent System for 

Management of Supplier Selection Process in a 

Fuzzy Supply Chain” International Journal of 

Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 23– 

No.6, June 2011 

Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 23– 

No.6, June 2011 

[7]Yang Lin and YaBo He (2011) ”Supply Chain 

Coordination Of Construction Management Based 

On Multi-Agent ” IEEE©2011 

[8]Vivek Kumar and Dr. S. Srinivasan (2010) “A 

Review of Supply Chain Management using 

Multi-Agent System” IJCSI International Journal 

of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 7, Issue 5, 

September 2010. 

GURMEET KAUR, She is 

persuing M.Tech.(CSE) from 

lovely professional university, 

phagwara (Punjab) after doing 

M.Sc. (comp.sc.) from guru 

nanak 

dev 

university,amritsar(Punjab).Her research area 

includes multi agent system applications in supply 

chain. email-id- gurmeetkaurvirdi@gmail.com 

Dr.BABITA PANDEY, She has done PHD. Now 

working as assistant professor in lovely 

professional university, Phagwara (Punjab). Her 

research area includes supply chain management. 

email-id- shukla_babita@yahoo.co.in 

[5]Wang Mia (2011) “Comprehensive evaluation 

and selection model of supplier under E-business” 

IEEE 978-1-4244-8673-0 @ 2011 

[6]Vivek Kumar , Dr. S. Srinivasan and Dr. 

Subhra Das (2011) “A Multi-Agent System for 

Management of Supplier Selection Process in a 

Fuzzy Supply Chain” International Journal of 



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