Product-Process Development Using Autonomous Agents

This proposal describes a new innovative approach to concurrent product-process development. The resulting system will also allow integrated development of production planning and scheduling, including external supplier integration. Our approach is based on the paradigm of autonomous agents. This proposal details the underlying concept, describes our efforts to date, and then defines a specific implementation of an autonomous agent system to increase the affordability of Navy and other systems. Our Phase I efforts will focus on demonstration of autonomous agents for concurrent product/process development, but the system we develop will also be usable for production scheduling and supplier integration.