Multiple Fuzzy Roles: Analysis of Their Evolution in a Fuzzy Agent-Based Collaborative Design Platform

Design for configurations is a highly collaborative and distributed process. The use of fuzzy agents, that implement the collaborative and distributed design by means of fuzzy logic, is highly recommended due to the fuzzy nature of the collaboration, distribution, interaction and design problems. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy agent model, where fuzzy agents grouped in communities interact and perform multiple fuzzy design roles to converge towards solutions of product configuration. Analysis of both interactions and multiple fuzzy roles of fuzzy agents during product configuration in a collaborative design platform is proposed. The modelling of fuzzy agents and its illustration for a collaborative design platform are presented. The results of analysis have shown the important influence of fuzzy solution agents in the organization of the agent based collaborative design for configurations platform. The more the fuzzy agents share their knowledge, the more their fuzzy roles are complete in every domain of design for configurations. The degree of interactions between fuzzy agents in the design for configurations process has an impact on the emergence of increased activity of some fuzzy agents. The fuzzy function agents, influenced by many fuzzy requirement agents, are the most active in the design process. The simulation shows that this observation can be extended to the fuzzy solution agents. The most active fuzzy solution agents are those which create the best consensual solution. Simulations show that the consensus can be found principally by increasing the degree of interactions.