Multi-agent Automated Negotiation Approach to Aircraft Maintenance

Abstract

In aircraft maintenance, performance of routine maintenance tasks is prone to generate additional non-routine tasks. These non- routine tasks relate to solving an unexpected issue and have specific requirements in terms of materiel, tools and manpower. In existing research regarding optimization of aircraft maintenance environments and schedules, these requirements are assumed to be in place or not considered at all. In real-life, the required resources may not be in place and retrieving them is subject to human interactions and decision-making, potentially resulting in delays in the maintenance schedule. This research proposes a novel methodology to address this problem by developing a multi-agent automated negotiation model capable of simulating negotiations related to the procurement of required aircraft materials in order to perform non-routine tasks. The proposed model explores its applicability by incorporating several negotiation strategies, adaptive parameters and negotiation circumstances, e.g. urgency. The main research question is: In the context of non-routine aircraft maintenance materiel availability, to what extent can multi- agent automated negotiation be applied to explore effective agent strategies for various negotiation circumstances regarding the procurement of aircraft components and expendables? The proposed methodology has shown to be very suitable for modelling negotiation circumstances as evaluation of the model’s performance has resulted in understanding and recommendations to policy makers concerning what strategy to apply in which circumstance. Variations of circumstances have lead to expected findings, e.g. increasing urgency results in a sooner delivery of materials, whereas in other situations the model’s KPIs are unaffected by parameter variations, unexpectedly.