Contract Net Protocol

About: Contract Net Protocol is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 606 publications have been published within this topic receiving 13729 citations.

Price-based approach for activity coordination in a supply network

Abstract: Pressed by market globalization and concomitant competition, more and more manufacturers are relying on their suppliers to provide raw materials and component parts so as to focus on their core competence. As a result, the coordination of activities across a network of suppliers becomes critical to quickly respond to dynamic market conditions. In this paper, a novel framework combining mathematical optimization and the contract net protocol is presented for make-to-order supply network coordination. Interactions among organizations are modeled by a set of interorganizational precedence constraints and the objective is to achieve the organizations' individual and shared goals of fast product delivery and low inventory. These interorganizational constraints are relaxed by using a set of interorganizational prices that represent marginal costs per unit time for the violation of such constraints. The overall problem is thus decomposed into organizational subproblems, where individual organizations schedule their activities based on their internal situations and interorganizational prices. Coordination is achieved through an iterative price-updating process carried out in a distributed and asynchronous manner. With prices dynamically updated and schedules adjusted, this approach coordinates activities to fulfill existing commitments while maintaining agility to take on new orders. Numerical testing results show that interorganizational prices converge and prices may change as new orders arrive to reflect the new pressure on deliveries.

A Multiagent System for Microgrid Operation in the Grid-interconnected Mode

Abstract: This paper presents a multiagent system for microgrid operation in the grid-interconnected mode. An energy market environment with generation competition is adopted for microgrid operation in order to guarantee autonomous participation and meet the requirements of participants in the micro- grid. The modified Contract Net Protocol (CNP) is used as a protocol for interactions among agents. The multiagent system for microgrid operation based on the modified CNP and the energy market en- vironment is designed and implemented. To verify the feasibility of the suggested multiagent system, experiments on three operation conditions are carried out.

Performance Evaluation of Contract Net-Based Heterarchical Scheduling for Flexible Manufacturing Systems

Abstract: This article presents a heterarchical scheduling approach for flexible manufacturing systems. The approach adopts a multiagent cooperative problem solving paradigm by using a bidding mechanism based on the contract net protocol to generate the production plan and schedule. Overall, scheduling is implemented using a Production Reservation approach. A typical job shop testbed demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach by comparing its performance to heuristic dispatching rules. Production Reservation augmented with the heuristic dispatching rules has also been shown to be even more effective, and should prove especially valuable in large variety discrete part and assembly manufacturing processes.

Distributed manufacturing control with extended CNP interaction of intelligent products

Abstract: This paper describes two heterarchical architectures which use distributed intelligence for the control (operation scheduling, resource allocation and product routing) of a manufacturing cell. In these architectures intelligence is put respectively at the product and through the network of workstation computers. The cost of embedded specialized hardware required for the first option is still very high. The second option needs the utilization of Automatic Identification and Data Capture technology close to the product to permit its identification and tracking by the computer system. These technologies enable the automated identification of objects, the collection of data about them, and the storage of that data directly into computer systems. Through this network, the computer system can access or update information in databases about the products and connect with software agents that represent production orders and resources and take in common decisions through negotiation and contract-based rules. The theory of the proposed solutions is based on the holonic manufacturing and product-driven automation concepts. The implementation methodology along with experimental results is presented, emphasizing the advantages of each solution.