Coordination of multiple distributed design chains based on congestion games model

NPD (New Product Development) is the most important stage in product life cycle in that NPD determines 80% of product cost. An NPD process is composed of certain parallel and sequential activities, which are fulfilled by a core company and some distributed satellite companies. Companies involved in NPD activities form design chains that usually operate concurrently. Facing a highly market oriented and quickly changing business environment, companies in design chains must frequently adjust themselves to deal with uncertainties. In distributed design chain network, core companies, loosely coupled with satellites, pursue individual maximum benefits subject to satellites´ bounded capacities. Conflicts therefore are likely to occur once any uncertainty happens. With no coordination mechanism, such conflicts will delay the product launch and cost companies their competitive positions. This study tries to solve the conflict problem by proposing a coordination mechanism. To build the mechanism, the congestion games model is adopted to formulate the design chain dynamic conflict problem, and then software agents are applied to implement it. This study takes an example to demonstrate the operation of the coordination mechanism, the demonstration finally are analyzed to discuss the performance of the proposed mechanism.