Multi-agent hierarchical negotiation based on augmented price schedules decomposition for distributed design

This paper presents a multi-agent negotiation mechanism for distributed design based on price schedules decomposition. The mechanism allows self-interested collaborators to jointly make design decisions for the benefit of an overall design task without disclosing individual objectives or rationales. This work extended a price schedules decomposition algorithm originally developed as a bi-level approach into a hierarchical decomposition algorithm by introducing augmented price schedules. Integrated with multi-agent technologies, the negotiation protocol, and strategy derived from the hierarchical algorithm realize a secure environment for automating distributed engineering design. A test scenario of distributed reliability allocation in complex system development validates the proposed mechanism. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.