Activity Overview
Specific activities
- Problem definition and target use case examination
- Development of solution architectures and elemental technologies to solve problems
- Implementation of Proof of Concept (PoCs) for the purpose of problem solving and social implementation
- Examination of system linkage method, international standardization activities of specifications
- Personal network formation and Information network formation
(study group meeting, presentation meeting and consultation meeting)
This activity is “an energy-saving accelerated market formation project subsidy”
(Note) using the formation of rules for fiscal 2021. Note: Subsidy projects of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to support projects that build forum standards
Activity Contents
Activities are conducted on a per-WG (Working Group) basis.
Each WG activities are as follows,
Manufacturing WG/example of parts procurement adjustment
Adjustment example: A logistics service company will add new additional requests for planned joint delivery, secure new trucks with large capacity, revise routes, and adjust arrival times for berth bookings according to the route.
AI makes individual adjustments at logistics service company.
Logistics WG/example of air cargo space allocation
Adjustment example: When a shipper makes a ship request, the shipper requests price and conditions estimation to multiple forwarders. For allocating reserved space on the airline to the request, each Forwarder will secure spot slots and request other shippers to consider delays delivery so that Forwarder’s customer can get required delivery slots.
AI takes a role of the Forwarder.
Logistics WG/joint delivery
Adjustment example: A logistics service company will add new additional requests for planned joint delivery, secure new trucks with large capacity, revise routes, and adjust arrival times for berth bookings according to the route.
AI makes individual adjustments at logistics service company.
Common WG/outline of eNegotiation
- Lots of message exchange for adjustment in logistics and manufacturing industry
- Replace mail, telephone and fax with EDI so that RPA and AI can use.
- Proposed eNegotiation Project to UN/CEFACT(United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business)
ーUN/CEFACT：
https://unece.org/
ーSIPS：
http://www.caos-a.co.jp/SIPS/index.html
ーE-Negotiation：
https://uncefact.unece.org/display/uncefactpublic/E+Negotiation - This project was officially adopted in October 2020. This project is planned to be active until the first half of 2022.
- The activity is to formulate a standard for the EDI (Electronic Data Exchange) of negotiations currently conducted by e-mail, telephone, fax, etc.
- Through EDI in accordance with the standard, negotiation transactions by people, RPA, and AI can be interconnected and interoperated between even independently developed systems.
Applying standard protocols
Applicable area(Scope)
- Mainly applied to communication and messaging in negotiation operations in the manufacturing and logistics industries
- Specifically, standard protocols are applied to adjustments such as delivery time, quantity, and price.
Application flow Step
- Select operations that apply standard protocols Step
- Define the messages of the operation flow in the standard protocol
For more information on how to apply standard petrocol, please refer to the following documents.
- BRS (Business Requirement Specification):
Describe requirements such as the scope of the standard protocol and processing procedures - Implementation Guide：Coming soon
Guidelines for implementing standard protocols
Common WG / IIC(Industry IoT Consortium)
●What is IIC (Industry IoT Consortium)?
- IIC is an international industry association that promotes industrial IoT from a vendor-neutral standpoint.
- IIC has a strong presence, including cooperation with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Industrie 4.0.
IIC homepage：
https://www.iiconsortium.org/
●Activity status
- NEC proposed the Negotiation Automation Platform Testbed and approved by IIC. (August,2019)
- NEC continues to make presentation for the progress and promote the activity at quarterly meetings and exhibitions.
- NEC participates in the technical subcommittee dealing with data exchange called Distributed Data Interoperability Management.
Common WG / organizing ANAC SCM league
- Since 2019, the Automated Negotiation Agent Competition has hosted an annual SCM league competing for negotiation skills.
- The contestants submitted the manufacturer‘s negotiation AI. In a virtual economic space, AI, which negotiates between AI, buys and sells parts and products, and uses them to formulate manufacturing plans at its own factory, and the AI that achieves the maximum profit after a certain period of time will be the winner.
- The number of participating teams increased year by year → 8 teams (2019) → 22 teams (2020) and 51 teams (2021)
Portal page of the league：https://scml.cs.brown.edu/