An agent-based-multi-issue many-to-many negotiation framework for construction material procurement

The recent development of multi-agent systems provides an innovative approach. to facilitate various negotiations. In this paper, we focus on the many-to-many negotiation setting for construction material procurement, where a GC negotiates with many suppliers individually in a bilateral fashion, and so do the suppliers. We propose an agent-based multi-issue many-to-many automated negotiation framework to improve negotiation efficiency and effectiveness. The framework integrates the multi-attribute utility theory and integration negotiation to suggest better deals with higher joint payoff. Since negotiation with many opponents simultaneously, a number of negotiation threads work-at the same time and mutually influence each other, we introduce commitment mechanism to permit both sides reneging their commitments by paying penalty fee, so that both sides can select the best deal, this is important and more practical in real construction material procurement cases.