Agent-based collaborative design system and conflict resolution based on a case-based reasoning approach

Abstract

Under the concept of a global economy, enterprises are assigning design and production environments around the world in different areas. A serious issue of information exchange emerges as companies use traditional hardware and very distinct software appropriate to their field of expertise. To overcome the problem of low productivity due to the interruption of information, the concept of simultaneous engineering and concurrent design becomes very significant. In this article an agent-based ship design system is developed to support cooperation in distributed ship design environments. Above all, the conflicts that occur while sharing knowledge in the system must be resolved. One approach is to adopt a case-based conflict resolution strategy formulated to resolve current conflict on the basis of similar previously resolved cases in agent-based collaborative design system environments. To do this, conflict cases that occur in the initial ship design stage are extracted. On the basis of the extracted cases, a case base is constructed. In addition, a conflict resolution handler located in the superagent called a facilitator, an agent to control other subagents, is developed to treat conflict problems effectively by case-based reasoning. The case-based conflict resolution strategy is evaluated by applying it to a collaborative design process in the initial ship design stage, especially the machinery outfitting design, the preliminary design, the hullform design, and the structural design. Through the help of the collaboration of the design agents, the facilitator, the conflict resolution handler, and the case-based system, a designer can make decisions based on similar previously resolved cases.