The exchange of cargo capacities is a well established approach in logistics. However, only few logistics marketplaces are able to take into consideration synergies that can be generated by combining different transportation routes of different logistics carrierps. In order to exploit these synergies, we designed and implemented the combinatorial exchange mechanism ComEx for the intra-enterprise exchange of delivery orders in a logistics company organized in a profit center structure. Each profit center is able to release delivery orders to an adjacent profit center if the geographic locations of the customers allow for a reduced-cost delivery by the adjacent profit center. We demonstrate that by using the ComEx mechanism, the total cost of transportation of our logistics company can be reduced by up to 14%. Since our iterative auction mechanism is very complex and therefore resourceintensive, we reduce the complexity by applying a convex hull approach combined with a distance-based cost estimator.
Our paper presents an agent-based simulation environment for task scheduling in distributed computer systems (grid). The scheduler enables the simultaneous allocation of bundles comprising resources such as CPU time, communication bandwidth, volatile, and non-volatile memory. The resources are allocated by an iterative combinatorial auction with proxybidding agents trying to acquire their desired resource allocation profiles. In order to support an efficient bidding process, the auctioneer provides resource price information to the bidding agents. Due to the complementarities and substitutionalities of the bid bundles in the proposed setting, the calculation of these prices is computationally expensive. This article proposes two different price approximation mechanisms: one scarcity basedscheme and a second approach using shadow prices based on the dual formulation of the relaxed linear program of the allocation problem. The stability of both allocation mechanisms is compared in the context of a closed grid system (economy) where agents buy and sell production capacity. The objective of each agent is to acquire complementary resource capacity to increase his productivity. The system's pricing and the agents' bidding behavior is evaluated based on both measures in situations of gradually increasing resource failure to test the stability of the allocation mechanism.
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