A negotiation strategy of collaborative maintenance chain and its multi-agent system design and development

Abstract

The common maintenance methods in the electrical power system relies on the emergent maintenance and periodic maintenance, which is lacking to avoid the equipment shutdown. To enrich the maintenance efficiency and system benefit, this reseach uses the electrical power systems as case example to propose a negotiation model of collaborative maintenance chain. Meanwhile, to flexibly adopt new information technology and new methodologies for expert systems, this research applies multi-agent system (MAS) technology to enable the integration of different systems and databases. Via wrapping the systems and databases into agents with certain degree of authorities, these agents are able to assist humans in information communication, discussion and negotiation, and finally the generation of decisions. Finally, this research implements a prototype system based on MAS architecture. And the MAS technology with characteristics such as pro-activity, reactivity, social ability, and autonomy into this collaborative maintenance chain is applied to enhance the communication efficiency. Moreover, this research applies game theory to design a negotiation game scenario and provides a platform for asset operation site, system provider and first-tier collaborator to negotiate their maintenance decisions. The objectives of different departments plan their resources allocation efficiently and effectively for the maintenance jobs planned and scheduled to ensure the best utilization. Consequently, this research is a devoted to develop the optimize functions as the basis for further agent-based enterprise resources negotiation. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2009.