A simulation environment for scheduling workflows in multi-agent systems

For small flexible enterprises to respond to business opportunities, an effective scheme to facilitate dynamic coalition, sharing of the core competencies and resources and workflow scheduling must be developed. Workflow scheduling in multi-agent systems (MAS) is a challenging problem due to the computational complexity involved, distributed architecture for publication and discovery of services provided by individual agents and dependency of different agents' workflows. How to develop a problem solver that can be applied in MAS to achieve coherent and consistent workflow schedules that can meet a customer's order is an important issue. In this paper, we propose a solution methodology for scheduling workflows in MAS. Our solution combines the multi-agent system architecture, contract net protocol and workflow models specified by Petri nets. A problem solver for workflow scheduling in MAS has been implemented.