Sales schedule optimisation in an agent-based technology

Byline: Nicolaos Protogeros, John Mylonakis, Panayiotis Tahinakis, Dimitrios Ginoglou This paper presents a formalised negotiation methodology for distributed sales schedule optimisation. The purpose is to solve the optimisation problem, taking into account constraints such as the salesmen capacity and income increase in a uniform way and the company's turnover increase. In this approach a sales schedule is developed dynamically by all of the concerned participants. The negotiation methodology used allows agents to negotiate with other agents in a certain geographical area based on their sales capacity, commission percentage and the area's sales turnover. A simulation model based on Repast3 has been developed to evaluate the algorithm accuracy and the system's convergence. By executing this prototype with various utility functions, interesting results have been achieved showing a convergence in total company's turnover, salesmen capacity and salesman income.