A MULTI-AGENT SPARE PART GROUPING SYSTEM FOR LOGISTICS OPTIMIZATION I

摘要

The readiness of any modem military is closely related to the availability of spare parts for equipment needing repair. One approach to solving this problem is through advanced manufacturing processes such as just-in-time or lean manufacturing. Moving to this type of environment typically involves grouping parts based on how they are made. This is a very intensive manual process that we have applied multi-agent technology to address. We have demonstrated that part groups can be effectively constructed based on a wide variety of characteristics of the parts. With an agent representing each part in the system, a minimum spanning tree algorithm is used for part agents to group themselves, be added to a group, or be split from a group. We have further shown that the results from our agent system can provide a different perspective to humans about a seemingly well understood problem.