Market-based collaborative control of distributed multiple product development projects

Due to the widespread availability of the internet large scale distributed projects in manufacturing are becoming popular. We present a distributed, collaborative, and adaptive control approach for distributed multiple product development projects (DMPDP), which is a representative project environment in modern e-enterprises. In DMPDP environment, multiple project groups share and compete for limited resources to achieve their own goals. On the other hand, the shared resource divisions try to utilize their resources efficiently. We suggest that this kind of situation can be well modeled and efficiently solved by using two novel approaches: multiagent based information infrastructure and market-based control mechanism. In this paper, we (i) formalize the DMPDP control problem, and (ii) propose a market-based negotiation mechanism called sequential market clearing (SMC) protocol. For clear presentation, some of information system design and implementation issues are also presented.