Study on collaborative product design based on modularity and multi-agent

With the form of the global information network and marketing, new products R & D are no longer confined to one city, one region or even one country, under the distributed heterogeneous environment collaborative product design (CPD) has become new tendency. Based on the new requirements of collaborative design process, a strategy of CPD based on the modularity thought and multi-agent technology is proposed. Firstly, the model of agent for CPD is constructed. And on the basis of the traditional methods of modularity, an agent-based modular decomposition method is presented. Secondly, the best matching agent is selected to solve the module by counting the integrated similarity degree between the task set of modules and the agent experiences set. And making use of the black-board mechanism the collaborative environment is achieved to support the multi-agent collaborative work. Finally, an agent-based automobile collaborative R&D platform is developed. The rationality and effectiveness of this methodology is proved in an instance of collaborative design of automobile body.