A Multi-agent Based Configuration Process for Mass Customization

Large product variety in mass customization involves a high internal complexity level inside a company’s operations, as well as a high external complexity level from a customer’s perspective. In order to reach a competitive advantage through mass customization, it is necessary to cope with both problems. This is done within the scope of variety formation and variety steering tasks: Variety formation supports customers during the configuration task according to their preferences and knowledge, variety steering tasks internally deal with finding the customizer’s optimal offer. Driven by this economic background, we present a comprehensive multi-agent based design for a configuration process in this paper. It is identified as a suitable solution approach integrating both perspectives. The mass customized products are assumed to be based on a modular architecture and each module variant is associated with an autonomous rational agent. Agents must compete with each other in order to join product variants which suit real customers’ requirements. The negotiation process is based on a market mechanism supported by the target costing concept and a Dutch auction.