A contract net based intelligent agent system for solving the reactive hoist scheduling problem

In this article a new approach for solving the Reactive Hoist Scheduling Problem is proposed. The investigation focuses on the case where multiple hoists, sharing the same rail, are used to convey a single type of jobs along the line according to a given production sequence. It is based on two distinct, though coupled, multi-agent systems. The first system is responsible for making a decision about the input date for the next job, while the second system is concerned with the assignment of transfer operations of jobs between tanks to the hoists. These multi-agent systems use two different types of auction mechanisms to attain cooperation.