Publications

Abstract : In today’s modern trading world, web based material demand aggregation has emerged as a significant and lively research front in the supply chain management. In common, the Demand Aggregation technique synchronizes and unites the requirements of the buyers with the active participation of a web based agent to offer a lucid depiction of purchasing requests throughout the enterprise. The objective of utilizing material demand aggregation is to offer services to all the buyers (manufacturers) in a cost effective manner. The web based agent is responsible for fulfilling this ultimate goal of web based material demand aggregation. It discovers the optimal suppliers who can supply the raw materials in a cost effective manner as manufacturers may require raw materials in different quantities and different suppliers are likely to offer materials at different slab rates. Moreover, the dilemma of web based agent increases as each manufacturer may require the raw materials at different instants of time. If the web based agent works only with the intention of enjoying more slab rates, it drives all the manufacturers to purchase at a single instant of time, on account of which some of the manufacturers will be affected because of high inventory costs incurred. Equally, if the manufacturers are suggested to purchase the materials just in time to avoid the inventory costs, they will miss the offer of slab rates leading to high purchasing cost. Thereby, we propose an analytical model which will pin down the optimal period of purchasing for all the manufacturers so that they can avoid the high inventory cost incurred and can also enjoy a good slab rate. With the aid of the proposed analytical model designed to achieve optimal purchasing period, the web based agent can guide all the manufacturers to purchase the required raw materials in a cost effective manner.