Multiagent system for integrated configuration of manufacturing products

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. Copyright © 2006 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.