Claims
- 1. A method of processing an exchange, comprising the steps of:
providing a solver/analyzer responsive to at least one bid of an exchange for determining at least one of an infeasible allocation, a winning allocation and a feasible allocation for said exchange, with each allocation having an allocation value; receiving at the solver/analyzer the at least one bid, with each bid including at least one item and an associated bid price; associating exchange description data (EDD) with the at least one bid, said EDD including at least one of the features of reserve price, free disposal, non-price attribute, adjustment, objective, constraint, feasibility obtainer, constraint relaxer, conditional pricing and quote request; receiving the associated EDD at the solver/analyzer; and processing the at least one bid in accordance with the at least one feature included of the associated EDD.
- 2. The method as set forth in claim 1, further comprising, prior to the receiving step, the steps of:
producing the at least one bid; comparing the at least one bid to a predetermined structure to verify that said at least one bid includes any required fields; and forwarding the at least one bid to the solver/analyzer for processing.
- 3. The method as set forth in claim 2, wherein the at least one bid is produced by a first independent process, compared by a second independent process and forwarded to a third independent process for solving/analyzing.
- 4. The method as set forth in claim 3, wherein the first, second and third independent processes are run on first, second and third independent computer systems, respectively.
- 5. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein:
when said exchange includes a plurality of bids, the determined allocation includes a subset of the plurality of bids; and the determined allocation is output to at least one of an exchange manager, a buyer and a seller.
- 6. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the non-price attribute feature includes at least one of a bid attribute and an item attribute that is utilized by the solver/analyzer to determine parameters and a character of said exchange.
- 7. The method as set forth in claim 6, wherein the bid attribute is one of credit history, shipping cost, bidder credit worthiness, bidder business location, bidder business size, bidder zip code, bidder reliability, bidder reputation, bidder timeliness, freight terms and conditions, insurance terms and conditions, bidder distance and bidder flexibility.
- 8. The method as set forth in claim 6, wherein the item attribute is one of size, color, weight, delivery date, width, height, purity, concentration, pH, brand, hue, intensity, saturation, shade, reflectance, origin, destination, volume, earliest pickup time, latest pickup time, earliest dropoff time, latest dropoff time, production facility, packaging and flexibility.
- 9. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the adjustment feature includes at least one of an item adjustment and a bid adjustment.
- 10. The method as set forth in claim 9, wherein:
the item adjustment includes a value and a condition; and the value is utilized to modify the bid price of the at least one bid when the condition is satisfied.
- 11. The method set forth in claim 10, where the item adjustment is based on an item attribute of the at least one bid.
- 12. The method as set forth in claim 10, wherein the value is one of added to, subtracted from, percentage added to and percentage subtracted from the bid price when the condition is satisfied.
- 13. The method as set forth in claim 11, wherein the item attribute of the item includes at least one of size, color, weight, delivery date, width, height, purity, concentration, pH, brand, hue, intensity, saturation, shade, reflectance, origin, destination, volume, earliest pickup time, latest pickup time, earliest pickup time, latest pickup time, production facility, packaging and flexibility.
- 14. The method as set forth in claim 10, wherein the condition is formed using at least one of the following operators associated with said condition: (i) equal to, (ii) less than, (iii) less than or equal to, (iv) greater than, (v) greater than or equal to and (vi) contains-item.
- 15. The method as set forth in claim 10, wherein two or more conditions are linked utilizing at least one of the operators AND, OR and NOT.
- 16. The method as set forth in claim 9, wherein:
the bid adjustment includes a value and a condition; and the value is utilized to modify the bid price of the at least one bid when the condition is satisfied.
- 17. The method set forth in claim 16, where the bid adjustment is based on the bid attribute of the at least one bid.
- 18. The method as set forth in claim 16, wherein the value is one of added to, subtracted from, percentage added to percentage subtracted from and multiplied to the bid price of the at least one bid when the condition is satisfied.
- 19. The method as set forth in claim 16, wherein the condition is one of a size of one or more items of the bid, a color of one or more items of the bid, a weight of one or more items of the bid, delivery date, bidder credit history, shipping costs, bidder credit worthiness, freight terms and conditions, insurance terms and conditions, bidder distance and bidder flexibility.
- 20. The method as set forth in claim 16, wherein the condition is formed using at least one of the following operators associated with said condition: (i) equal to, (ii) less than, (iii) less than or equal to, (iv) greater than, (v) greater than or equal to and (vi) contains-item.
- 21. The method as set forth in claim 16, wherein two or more conditions are linked utilizing at least one of the operators AND, OR and NOT.
- 22. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the objective feature establishes one of a maximization goal and a minimization goal for the exchange.
- 23. The method as set forth in claim 22, wherein the objective feature includes one of a surplus, a traded ask volume, a traded bid volume, a traded average volume, a number of winning bidders and a number of losing bidders.
- 24. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the constraint feature includes at least one limit on at least one property of the at least one bid.
- 25. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the constraint feature includes a cost constraint that causes the solver/analyzer to limit an amount of an exchange value that is allocated to a bid group to be no more than a predetermined percent or cost of the exchange value, where the bid group includes at least one bid.
- 26. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the constraint feature includes a unit constraint that causes the solver/analyzer to limit a quantity of an item that is awarded to a bid group to no more than a predetermined maximum quantity or percentage, where the bid group includes at least one bid.
- 27. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the constraint feature includes a cost requirement that causes the solver/analyzer to allocate to a bid group at least a predetermined percent or cost of an allocation value, or nothing, where the bid group includes at least one bid.
- 28. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the constraint feature includes a unit requirement that causes the solver/analyzer to allocate to a bid group at least a predetermined quantity or percentage of an allocation, or nothing, where the bid group includes at least one bid.
- 29. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the constraint feature includes a counting constraint that causes the solver/analyzer to generate an allocation that includes a number of winning bid groups within a specified range, where each bid group includes at least one bid.
- 30. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the constraint feature includes a counting requirement that causes the solver/analyzer to generate an allocation that includes at least one of no winning bid groups and a number of winning bid groups within a specified range, where each bid group includes at least one bid.
- 31. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the constraint feature includes a homogeneity constraint that causes the solver/analyzer to generate an allocation that includes a uniformity of items or bids as a function of an item attribute description associated with the items or bids.
- 32. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the constraint feature includes a mixture constraint that causes the solver/analyzer to generate an allocation that includes a specified average limit of an item or bid attribute of a bid group.
- 33 The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the constraint relaxer feature causes the solver/analyzer to relax at least one soft constraint placed on an exchange and to determine a value associated with said relaxation.
- 34. The method as set forth in claim 33, wherein the exchange includes at least one hard constraint that the solver/analyzer cannot relax.
- 35. The method as set forth in claim 33, wherein the solver/analyzer aggregates the value associated with at least one relaxed soft constraint.
- 36. The method as set forth in claim 35, wherein the aggregate constraint relaxation value is a function of how much each soft constraint is relaxed.
- 37. The method as set forth in claim 36, wherein:
each soft constraint is assigned a weight; the aggregate constraint relaxation value is the sum of the relaxation values of relaxed soft constraints; and the relaxation value of each relaxed soft constraint is one of (i) the constraint's weight, (ii) the constraint's weight multiplied by the percentage amount that it is relaxed, and (iii) the constraint's weight multiplied by the absolute amount that it is relaxed.
- 38. The method as set forth in claim 35, wherein the allocation output by the solver/analyzer (i) satisfies each hard constraint of the exchange that the solver/analyzer cannot relax and (ii) maximizes or minimizes a value of the exchange minus the aggregate constraint relaxation value.
- 39. The method as set forth in claim 35, wherein the feasibility obtainer feature causes the solver/analyzer to output an allocation that (i) satisfies each hard constraint of the exchange that the solver/analyzer cannot relax and (ii) minimizes the aggregate constraint relaxation value.
- 40. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the conditional pricing feature includes at least one of the following:
cost conditional pricing that causes the solver/analyzer to modify a value of an allocation based on a difference between the total awarded currency volume of a first bid group and the total awarded currency volume of a second bid group, where the first bid group includes at least one bid; and unit conditional pricing that causes the solver/analyzer to modify a value of an allocation based on a difference between an awarded unit volume of a first bid group and an awarded unit volume of a second bid group, where the first bid group includes at least one bid.
- 41. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the at least one bid includes at least one of a maximum constraint and a minimum constraint for specifying the maximum and minimum quantity that can be awarded to the bid, respectively.
- 42. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the reserve price feature causes the solver/analyzer to one of:
(i) establish a maximum price above which a bid for an item or bundle of items will not be bought; and (ii) establish a minimum price below which a bid an item or bundle of items will not be sold.
- 43. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the free disposal feature causes the solver/analyzer to one of:
allocate less than an offered quantity of an item for sale without affecting the bid price; and allocate more than an offered quantity of the item for purchase without affecting the bid price.
- 44. The method as set forth in claim 1, further comprising at least one of the steps of:
(i) modifying at least one feature of the EDD associated with the at least one bid and processing the at least one bid in accordance with said modified feature; (ii) including another feature with the EDD associated with the at least one bid and processing the at least one bid in accordance with said other feature; and (iii) associating with the bid another EDD that includes another feature and processing the at least one bid in accordance with said other feature.
- 45. The method as set forth in claim 1, further comprising the steps of:
terminating processing of the at least one bid in response to at least one of (i) elapse of predetermined time interval, (ii) a current best solution being within a predetermined numerical distance of an optimal solution and (iii) a manual abort command; and outputting the current best solution.
- 46. The method as set forth in claim 1, wherein the quote request feature causes the solver/analyzer to determine for a bid associated with the quote request a price that would result in the bid being included in an allocation.
- 47. A computer readable medium having stored thereon instruction which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform the steps of:
receive a plurality of bids in connection with an exchange, with each bid including at least one item and an associated price; associating exchange description data (EDD) with at least one of the bids, the EDD including at least one of the following features: reserve price, free disposal, non-price attribute, adjustment, objective, constraint, feasibility obtainer, constraint relaxer, conditional pricing and quote request; and processing the at least one bid in accordance with the at least one feature included in the associated EDD to obtain an allocation for the exchange.
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
[0001] The present invention claims priority from U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/371,451, filed Apr. 10, 2002, entitled “Side Constraints And Non-Price Attributes In Combinatorial Markets”.
Provisional Applications (1)
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Number |
Date |
Country |
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60371451 |
Apr 2002 |
US |