Utilization of Pheromone in Production Scheduling by Negotiation and Cooperation Among Customers

This paper proposes a scheduling method imitating a negotiation among customers ordering products and a cooperating method among them. Combinatorial Auction is used to imitate the negotiation. Auction goods are the right to use a machine. A bidder is the customer and makes a bid. Timeslots for product processing, are included in the bid. The proposed cooperating method uses a pheromone to memorize negotiation records. Bidders deposit pheromones on auctioned goods included in bids. When a bidder makes a bid, the bidder prefers goods deposited own pheromone and avoids goods deposited other bidders' pheromones to obtain a schedule which leads to an agreement among all customers. Computational experiments are conducted to discuss the effectiveness of the proposed method.