Title: Multiagent system for integrated configuration of manufacturing products

Authors: Tom Wanyama, Behrouz Homayoun Far

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive, NW, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive, NW, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada

Abstract: Design in Product-Configuration-Based Manufacturing (PCBM) is a complex undertaking, which involves a variety of stakeholders such as designers, manufacturers and marketers. Each stakeholder has his/her set of criteria for evaluating the alternative designs and egocentric goals that should be met by the selected design. Therefore, the design process can be viewed as an optimisation problem involving multiple stakeholders, multiple criteria and multiple selection objectives. In this paper, we present a multiagent system for integrating the concerns of different manufacturing domains into the design process. The agents utilise a hybrid of analytic and artificial intelligence techniques, to identify stakeholder conflicts, as well as possible agreement options. Furthermore, the community of agents facilitates information sharing among stakeholders in an effort to improve the quality of their design decisions.

Keywords: product design; intelligent agents; product configuration; stakeholders; information sharing; game theory; qualitative reasoning; optimisation; multi-agent systems; agent-based systems; DSS; information sharing; design decisions; decision making; decision support systems; integrated design; configuration manufacturing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMTM.2006.008789

International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management, 2006 Vol.8 No.1/2/3, pp.19 - 36

Published online: 25 Jan 2006 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article