Distributed optimisation of a logistic system and its suppliers using ant colonies

This paper introduces a new multi-agent approach for collaborative management of logistic and supply systems based on the ant colony optimisation (ACO) meta-heuristic. The logistic system and its suppliers can be modelled as partners of a supply chain. The management methodology is defined as a set of distributed scheduling problems that exchange information during the optimisation process. Each problem is solved by an ant colony agent that uses the pheromone matrix as the communication platform. A simulation example shows that the proposed coordination mechanism improves the supply-chain performance compared to a traditional management approach, where both problems are considered separately.