Autonomous and flexible multiagent systems enhance transport logistics

This paper presents an autonomous multiagent system which optimizes the planning and scheduling of industrial processes using the example of courier and express services. In order to handle the rising demands and to capitalize on the increasing optimization potential in transport logistics, which both result from the consequent integration of industrial processes into the Internet of Things and Services, the presented dispAgent solution ensures a flexible, adaptive, and proactive system behavior. Intelligent, selfishly acting agents represent logistic entities, which communicate and negotiate with each other to optimize the allocation of orders to transport facilities. The system has been developed in cooperation with our industrial partner tiramizoo, which is an expert in courier and express services. In order to determine the quality of the computed solutions, we evaluated the system using an established benchmark set and compared the results to best-known solutions. In addition, we further validated the system's performance by multiple simulations of real-world scenarios relying on data which was provided by our industrial partner. The results show that the system achieves high quality solutions for the benchmark set and outperforms a standard dispatching software product in real-world scenarios.