A Multi-agent and Dynamic Programming Algorithm for Aeronautical Maintenance Planning

The competitiveness of the aviation maintenance companies is strictly connected to the security, the quality, the efficiency, the costs and the speed of the maintenance processes. This entails a critical role for the planning of maintenance activities. A specific resource allocation problem for aeronautical maintenance activities is described and a combination of a dynamic programming strategy and an agent-oriented approach for the planning of these activities is proposed. Since the dynamic programming algorithm presented is inherently parallelizable then a multi-agent strategy that allows distributed computing is proposed.it A coordination mechanism guarantees the actions of multiple agents lead to a global solution. Agent-based methods inherently overcome the limitations of centralized load-balancing and they can adaptively execute on dynamic networks of workstations.