Multi-agent coordination schemas in decentralized production systems

Decentralized production systems are considered organizational structures able to match agility and efficiency which are necessary to compete in the global market. One of the challenges faced by the decentralized production systems is to ensure the coordination of heterogenuous decisions of the multi-agent populated production system. In the decentralized production system, the double marginalization makes the upstream agents conservative to build the system optimal capacity. This further makes the system falling into inefficiency. To overcome the system inefficiency, this paper proposes the cost-revenue sharing schema and the transfer-payment schema. These schemas are self-enforcing, which coordinate the capacity decision in the production systems, and allow the system profit to be maximized as well as the agents' profits to be improved.