An agent-based negotiation approach to integrate process planning and scheduling

This paper presents the development of an agent-based negotiation approach to integrate process planning and scheduling (IPPS) in a job shop kind of flexible manufacturing environment. The agent-based system comprises two types of agents, part agents and machines, to represent parts and machines respectively. For each part, all feasible manufacturing processes and routings are recorded as alternative process plans. Similarly, alternative machines for an operation are also considered. With regard to the scheduling requirements and the alternative process plans of a part, the proposed agent-based IPPS system aims to specify the process routing and to assign the manufacturing resources effectively. To establish task allocations, the part and machine agents have to engage in bidding. Bids are evaluated in accordance with a currency function which considers an agent's multi-objectives and IPPS parameters. A negotiation protocol is developed for negotiations between the part agents and the machine agents. The protocol is modified from the contract net protocol to cater for the multiple-task and many-to-many negotiations in this paper. An agent-based framework is established to simulate the proposed IPPS approach. Experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. The performance measures, including makespan and flowtime, are compared with those of a search technique based on a co-evolutionary algorithm.