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MinneTAC takes third place in Supply-Chain Management competition

July 28, 2009

Picture of the MinneTAC team

MinneTAC took third place in the Supply-Chain Management  competition at the annual Trading Agent Competition recently held at the International Joint Conference for Artificial Intelligence in Pasadena. Team members included student Will Groves and CSE faculty advisors John Collins and Maria Gini, with help from CSE student Mohamed Elidrisi, undergrads Andrew Nelson, Dhruv Goel, and Mitchell Mays, and MSSE students Dickens Nyabuti and Mehdi Benyebka. Also on the team were CSE alum Wolf Ketter and several of his students from Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

Trading Agents in the Supply-Chain competition must manage a simulated manufacturing operation, purchasing parts, managing inventories, scheduling production, and selling finished goods. Both the procurement market and the sales market are competitive and highly variable. Agents begin a simulation with empty bank accounts, and must borrow money to build up inventories before they can sell products. The agent with the largest bank account at the end of a simulated year of operation is the winner.