A Multi-agent Hybrid Approach to Decision Support in Job Groups Handling

This study deals with scheduling groups of jobs, their arrival and delivery, and individual processing of each of them. All jobs in a group should be delivered at the same time after processing. One of the objectives is to minimize the average delivery time of the group containing that job (waiting period). The new way of modeling and solving the decision problem - a multi-agent hybrid approach is presented. This approach includes the design and implementation of two agent types: MP-agents (Mathematical Programming) and CLP-agents (Constraint Logic Programming). The iterative algorithm for solving the model under dynamic emergence of new orders is also included. This structure enables managers to ask all kinds of questions.