Abstract
In recent years, the application of agent-based systems in manufacturing has received a lot of attention in several areas, particularly scheduling and shop-floor control. This paper explores two methods of enhancing the negotiation process employed by an agent-based system to support performance improvements in real-time routing of job orders within job-shop environments. The first method takes advantage of an extended negotiation period to provide a more complete picture of the shop's conditions in order to enhance the validity of the decisions made by individual agents. The second approach explores the possibility of process model data to increase the accuracy of time estimates used in the negotiation process. The resulting performance of the two methods is tested using a simulated job shop.
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Usher, J.M. Negotiation-based routing in job shops via collaborative agents. Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing 14, 485–499 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025705426184
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025705426184