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

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

A hybrid TLBO-TS algorithm for integrated selection and scheduling of projects

This paper deals with the problem of scheduling of multiple projects sharing a common pool of resources. New two-phase heuristics are proposed and compared with the existing single and two-phase heuristics. These two-phase heuristics are based on a two-stage prioritisation process of activities for resource allocation in which, at any decision point, the projects are first prioritised as per project selection rule and eligible activities in the projects are then prioritised as per activity selection rule. The two-phase heuristics are categorized into look-ahead and non-look-ahead type based on the project selection rules used. Performance of the heuristics is evaluated in two stages for two performance measures – minimising mean project delay and minimising increase over critical project duration. The results show that the some look-ahead heuristics produces better schedules when used with appropriate minimum/maximum criterion. The results also show that the heuristics which are superior in minimising mean project delay generally perform poorly in minimising increase over critical project duration.

Two-phase heuristics for scheduling of multiple projects

In organisations, dealing with projects, multiple projects are run simultaneously sharing a common pool of resources. The resources in such a multi-project environment are generally transferred between the projects, consuming significant amounts of both time and cost. In most of the existing models for multi-project planning and scheduling, however, these transfers are implicitly assumed to occur instantaneously with no extra cost. This assumption of instantaneous resource transfers, in most of the practical situations, is not valid and thus may lead to unrealistic schedules. This article is aimed at modelling of these transfers of resources in multi-project scheduling. A generalised model for inter-project resource transfers is presented and an integer linear program is proposed for minimising the penalty/reward for tardy/early projects, and the cost of idleness and transfer of the resources. A heuristic procedure is also developed and computational results are reported.

M.L. 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

A hybrid TLBO-TS algorithm for integrated selection and scheduling of projects

Two-phase heuristics for scheduling of multiple projects

Scheduling of multiple projects with resource transfers