Industrial Agents explains how multi-agent systems improve collaborative networks to offer dynamic service changes, customization, improved quality and reliability, and flexible infrastructure. Learn how these platforms can offer distributed intelligent management and control functions with communication, cooperation and synchronization capabilities, and also provide for the behavior specifications of the smart components of the system. The book offers not only an introduction to industrial agents, but also clarifies and positions the vision, on-going efforts, example applications, assessment and roadmap applicable to multiple industries. This edited work is guided and co-authored by leaders of the IEEE Technical Committee on Industrial Agents who represent both academic and industry perspectives and share the latest research along with their hands-on experiences prototyping and deploying industrial agents in industrial scenarios.Learn how new scientific approaches and technologies aggregate resources such next generation intelligent systems, manual workplaces and information and material flow systemGain insight from experts presenting the latest academic and industry research on multi-agent systemsExplore multiple case studies and example applications showing industrial agents in a variety of scenariosUnderstand implementations across the enterprise, from low-level control systems to autonomous and collaborative management units

Industrial Agents: Emerging Applications of Software Agents in Industry

Consensus reaching processes as part of solving group decision-making problems attempt to reach a mutual agreement in the group before making a decision. Most consensus models and consensus support systems that are proposed in the literature present some noticeable drawbacks: the need for constant human supervision by experts to guarantee an effective process and the difficulty to manage large groups of experts, which are increasingly common in current decisions and may imply a higher cost and complexity to carry out such processes. In order to overcome these problems, this paper presents a novel consensus support system based on the multiagent system paradigm, which automates and supports consensus reaching processes by providing agents with the necessary degree of autonomy to conduct discussion processes by themselves, with a semisupervised methodology. The main novelty of such a system is the agent semisupervised autonomy approach it incorporates, which lets agents conduct most of the discussion process by themselves and allows them to interact with their corresponding human experts under certain circumstances in which human supervision might be convenient and necessary.

A Semisupervised Multiagent System Model to Support Consensus-Reaching Processes

An updated survey of variants and extensions of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem

A multi-agent system for decentralized multi-project scheduling with resource transfers

Most approaches to multi-project scheduling are based on the assumption that resources can be transferred between projects without any expense in time and cost. As this assumption often is not realistic, we generalise the multi-project scheduling problem (RCMPSP) by additionally including transfer times and cost. To integrate this aspect, in a first step, we develop a framework for considering resource transfers in single and multi-project environments. It includes managerial approaches to handle resource transfers, a classification of resource transfer types and new roles that resources can take in these transfers. Afterwards, we define the multi-project scheduling problem with transfer times (RCMPSPTT) and formulate it in a basic and an extended version as integer linear programmes. Eventually, it is supplemented for the first time by cost considerations and introduced as resource constrained multi-project scheduling problem with transfer times and cost (RCMPSPTTC). Computational experiments compare the presented managerial approaches and prove the necessity of explicitly considering transfer times in project scheduling. Moreover, the experiments evaluate the presented MIP models and show that specialised solution procedures are vital.

Managing and modelling general resource transfers in (multi-)project scheduling

A multi-agent system for distributed multi-project scheduling: An auction-based negotiation approach

This book analyses several aspects of Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM), a form of hybrid public–private partnership for development of roads sector in India 

Abhinav Mittal

Papers

A multi-agent system for distributed multi-project scheduling: An auction-based negotiation approach

A multi-agent system for decentralized multi-project scheduling with resource transfers

Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM) of Hybrid Public-Private Partnership Projects: Contractual, Financing, Tax and Accounting Discussions