Integration of Maintenance Constraints in Scheduling: Fuzzy Modelling and Multi-Agent Approach

Abstract

The scheduling problem should be solved through a negotiation process: negotiation between functions of the companies, or between companies in the case of networked enterprises. We show in this paper how a multi-agent approach can allow to build a schedule which provides a compromise between the partially conflicting objectives of several services, namely Production, Sales and Maintenance. Some of the considered constraints are not crisp in an industrial context and hove been modelled using fuzzy temporal windows in order to bring the conflict solving technique closer to the industrial reality.