Resource Allocation in Continuous Production using Market-Based Multi-Agent Systems

Distributed resource allocation is a promising field for the application of multi-agent systems also in technical or industrial environments. The design of the multi-agent system then mainly comprises the definition of the agents´ local knowledge and behavior as well as the definition of an interaction protocol for overall coordination. Most solutions of agent-based resource allocation however exist in static or discrete-event systems while the allocation of resources to continuous dynamic systems is hardly addressed. In order to derive the local and the interaction behavior of the agents, we refer to a mathematical formulation of the resource allocation problem as an optimization problem. Based on a marketlike coordination scheme, a new agent-based solution for the allocation of resources to continuous production processes is developed and applied to an industrial examples. The novelty hereby is the suitable combination of resource allocation and process control in continuous production.