Formalizing and Reasoning about Supply Chain Contracts between Agents

Published

January 8, 2023

Author(s)

Dylan Flynn, Chasity Nadeau, Jeannine Shantz, Marcello Balduccini, Tran Son, Edward Griffor

Abstract

Inspired by the recent problems in supply chains, we propose an approach to declarative modeling of contracts between agents that will eventually support reasoning about resilience of and about ways to improve supply chains. Specifically, we present a high-level language for specifying and reasoning about contracts over action domains of agents. We assume that the behavior of the agents can be formally expressed through action theories and view a contract as a collection of constraints. Each constraint specifies the responsibility of an agent to achieve a certain result by a deadline. Each agent also has a mapping between constraints and the agent's concerns, i.e. issues that the agent is concerned about, which are modeled in accordance with the CPS Framework proposed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. We discuss how common questions related to the fulfillment of a contract or the concerns

Citation

International Symposium on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages

Publisher Info

Springer, New York, NY

Pub Type

Book Chapters

Download Paper

DOI Link

Keywords

Specifying and reasoning about contracts · Supply chain · Cyber- Physical System Framework · Answer Set Programming

Citation

Flynn, D. , Nadeau, C. , Shantz, J. , Balduccini, M. , Son, T. and Griffor, E. (2023), Formalizing and Reasoning about Supply Chain Contracts between Agents, International Symposium on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages, Springer, New York, NY, [online], https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24841-2_10 (Accessed October 16, 2025)