EAGER: Negotiated Resource Sharing Strategies to Facilitate New Product Introductions

新产品的推出是许多行业竞争的重要基础。 新产品引进的有效管理需要不同部门之间的协作和协调，如销售和营销，制造和产品工程。 每个单位控制一些关键资源和信息，但依赖于其他单位的资源和信息来履行其职能。 由此产生的不同目标的单位之间的制造能力的竞争，往往由中央决策者仲裁，可能会导致延迟，次优的决定。 EARLY概念探索性研究资助（EAGER）项目研究了新的分散方法的机会，这些方法鼓励功能单元之间的信息共享，以提供更好的集中控制替代方案。 该项目将为多方谈判提供新的见解，并通过深入了解如何更好地管理工业，非营利和国防环境中的新产品引入，为国家福利做出贡献。 该奖项将为PI的研究生提供支持。该项目将评估两种新方法的优点，以构建分散的决策。第一个将涉及新兴领域的算法博弈论开发计算效率的近似算法，以确定这些问题的平衡解决方案。第二个将涉及组合拍卖的研究，即每个单位在不同的时间段内竞标制造能力。 广泛的文献博弈论和组合拍卖提出了一个机会，开发新的配方这个问题。几个研究流解决了问题的不同方面，但目前没有一个能够在所有方面模拟甚至简化版本的问题。因此，在目前的知识阶段，还不清楚用这些工具对这个问题进行协调一致的攻击应该采取什么方向。EAGER项目的目标是澄清这个问题，确定最有希望的攻击路线，同时消除那些不太可能成功的攻击路线。

The introduction of new products is an important basis for competition in many industries. Effective management of new product introductions requires collaboration and coordination between different units such as sales and marketing, manufacturing, and product engineering. Each unit controls some critical resources and information, but depends on resources and information from other units to perform its function. The resulting competition for manufacturing capacity between units with different objectives, often arbitrated by a central decision maker, may result in delayed, suboptimal decisions. This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project studies the opportunity for new, decentralized approaches that encourage information sharing among functional units to provide better alternatives to centralized control. The project will yield new insights into multiparty negotiation as well as contributing to the national welfare through insights into how to better manage new product introduction in industrial, non-profit and defence environments. The award will provide support for a graduate student working with the PI.This project will evaluate the merits of two novel approaches to structuring decentralized decision making. The first will involve the emerging field of algorithmic game theory to develop computationally efficient approximation algorithms for determining equilibrium solutions for these problems. The second will involve the study of combinatorial auctions, where each unit bids for manufacturing capacity across different time periods. The extensive literature on game theory and combinatorial auctions present an opportunity to develop novel formulations of this problem. Several streams of research address different aspects of the problem, but none is currently capable of modelling even simplified versions of the problem in all aspects. Hence at the current stage of knowledge it is not clear what direction a concerted attack on this problem with these tools should take. The objective of this EAGER project is to clarify this issue, identifying the most promising lines of attack while eliminating those unlikely to succeed.