Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Intelligence for Business Transactions
Business transactions are at the core of economic analysis as well as a prime area for research in Evolutionary Computation and for implementing scenarios in AI settings. The paper's focus is on the issue of synchronizing activities and coordinating the agents of the firm in a supply chain environment. After briefly discussing the general coordination model, the Hourglass model, we present a mathematical model for achieving coordination inside the firm and show how the agents' activities are coordinated in a department, as well as across departments. The coordination model specifies the synchronization conditions by considering message travel times and product/support operational requirements. The conditions for achieving coordination and the relationships between operational and support departments are an original contribution in the economics of the firm. In the final part of the paper, we indicate how the coordination model's results can be utilized in a dedicated AI environment for studying economic relations among firm/market participants.