Online Bidding Process for Automated Negotiations

EFPF project supports a circular economy scenario, from wastes to energy. The wastes producer sells its wastes to a waste management company which pre-process them and sell them again to a bioenergy company to produce energy. A part of this energy returns back to the first company that has produced the wastes as an outcome of its production processes.

The negotiation of offers and services regarding processed wastes is a very challenging procedure since it involves several organisations from different sectors (such as recycling companies) and needs fast decision making. All these procedures are conducted manually using phones and emails to select the offers and choose the best one based on specific criteria such as price, health and safety issues (regarding collection) etc. This procedure is inefficient and expensive. The three companies participating in the circular economy scenario need a solution that will provide automated bids and negotiations through an online system to obtain high-quality services and products at reasonable prices.

EFPF Online Bidding Process service provides an automated matchmaking mechanism for information requests from buyers to suppliers, to execute negotiations and business transactions automatically via configured agents. It is a matchmaking application that achieves automated negotiations and business transactions between interested stakeholders. The matchmaker’s goal is to find the best possible supplier to fulfil a request for a service or product in a fully automated way. Different decision criteria for supplier’s selection, according to several qualitative and quantitative factors, are considered by the matchmaker. It also evaluates the available offers from the providers in order to suggest the best one to the supplier. Virtual agents enable the automated communication between companies as every company is represented by an agent during the communication/negotiation phase.

Partners: KLEEMANN, ELDIA, MILOIL, LINKS and CERTH