Nicolas R. Jennings - Böcker

The ability of production companies to rapidly develop and deploy effective and efficient control systems is critical for success in the consumer-driven environment of contemporary manufacturing. This book presents a novel approach to the design of manufacturing control systems, based around the idea of agents, semiautonomous decision makers that cooperate to process goods and meet orders. This new methodology is DACS Designing Agent-based Control Systems. Developed at DaimlerChryslers research labs in Berlin, DACS is the first methodology specifically produced for the design of agent-based control systems. Beginning with a detailed overview of agent technologies, manufacturing control, and design methodologies, the book explains the DACS methodology and illustrates it by way of detailed case studies. The book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in agent systems, manufacturing control, and software methodologies.

This book contains a selection of papers presented at the Dagstuhl Seminar “Negotiation and Market Engineering” held for one week in November 2006, in Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany. The papers were submitted for publication in this book and reviewed after the seminar. The seminar was a meeting point for participants from academia and industry who arrived from four continents to discuss research on negotiations, auctions, and markets as well as their application. Analyzing, designing, and introducing such complex systems as negotiations, auctions, and markets inevitably requires an interdisciplinary approach because of their psychological, social, and cultural character; economic, legal, and political aspects; quantitative and qualitative considerations; and strategic, tactical, and managerial perspectives. Thus the organizers of the seminar paid special attention to having a mix of researchers with diverse backgrounds from various disciplines – the most common disciplines represented at the seminar were computer science, information systems, economics, business administration, and mathematics. Despite the foundation in different disciplines, during the seminar it became apparent that the different perspectives, approaches, and methodologies used to assess negotiations, auctions, and markets were highly interrelated and an excellent tool box to achieve a holistic view on the object of research. Although this was not unexpected, the success of the seminar and its interdisciplinary exchange of ideas gave further encouragement for the persual of research without confinement by traditional boundaries of disciplines.