Multi-agent based petroleum supply chain coordination: A Co-evolutionary Particle Swarm Optimization approach

Abstract

Petroleum industry supply chain is a complex supply chain with large number of processes starting right from extraction till customer delivery. In this paper multi-agent technology has been applied to make the supply chain faster as compared to conventional supply chain practices. Here a representative but exhaustive model is considered, by taking into account the various options available at each agent. Solving this problem requires an advanced heuristic method like co-evolutionary particle swarm optimization based on Cauchy distribution which has been precisely made for cost and resource allocation. Cauchy provides a very rapid path towards approaching the solution. The previous work done on the co-PSO using Gaussian approach is compared with that of Cauchy approach and relevant conclusions drawn.