Applying agent-based negotiation approach for parallel machine scheduling with preference of machines

The electro-etching process is the critical process in the production of aluminum foil. The manufacturing process has many parallel machines with three distinct voltage equipments. Therefore, the production scheduling is parallel-machine and its choices of eligibility. In this paper, an agent-based negotiation approach is proposed to develop a distributed parallel-machine scheduling application in this manufacturing environment. The agent-based system comprises three types of agents, job agents, machine agents and management agent, to represent jobs, machines and supervisor respectively. To establish job allocations, job agents and machine agents have to bid interactively. A negotiation protocol is developed for negotiations between job agents and machine agents. And management agent is added, and plays as a centralized controller and a system coordinator. The main function of management agent is to manage negotiations between job agents and machine agents to ensure that the global objectives of system primary are being observed. It is possible to consider one or several different global objectives such as minimizing total jobs' tardiness and flow time, balancing machines' loading, and maximizing total revenue. This paper will provide an integrated agent-based parallel eligible machines scheduling solution with a better global performance.