A fuzzy configuration multi-agent approach for product family modelling in conceptual design

Product modelling is an essential issue in the configurable product design. Many attempts have been made for modelling the configurable products. However, most of conducted research considers the configurable product modelling as an arrangement problem of a predefined set of components into a valid product structure. This paper considers configuration not only as a structural problem but also as a collaborative design problem. Product configuration must consider explicitly different actors and their perspectives influencing simultaneously the design of configurable products. Solving product configuration problems requires collaboration of actors from multiple distributed views. Therefore, from process and product point of views, engineering design of configurable products can be assisted by multi-agents systems. Following up this consideration, this paper proposes a Fuzzy Configuration Grammar based agents to assist collaborative and distributed design for configuration. Based on the distributed fuzzy models, fuzziness of interactions during the collaborative and distributed design for configuration, a computational approach for product configuration is developed. Modelling and implementation of an agent-based system, called G-APIC (Grammars based Agents for Product Integrated Configuration), is presented. In this agent-based system, there are four communities of agents: requirement community of agents, function community of agents, physical solution community of agents and process constraint community of agents. A fuzzy set of consensual physical solution agents, a sub community of alternative physical solution agents satisfying both customer’s requirements and different process views constraints, emerges from intra and inter-communities interactions of agents. Then, the proposed Fuzzy Configuration Grammar allows the interactions between these fuzzy consensual solution agents. The optimal product configuration, a fuzzy set of interacted consensual solution agents, emerges from these interactions. A case study illustrates the proposed approach.

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