A FORMAL REPRESENTATION OF THE PROCESS OF PRODUCT DESIGN OF CASE FURNITURE IN MULTI-AGENT MEDIUM
We consider the logical structure of the technological design process (TDP) running in multi-agent medium of virtual design office of furniture (DOF) provided by a set of design procedures, each of which, in its turn, includes a number of project activities related to each other. There is formalized presentation of TDP as Metagraphy. Such formalized presentation provides opportunities to simplify the process control with dynamic structure and allow enterprises to obtain required level of detail of their structure when modeling a particular design problem. Metagraphy vertices are the agents and executed project procedures, combined in appropriate metacertices connected to each other by metabows. The totality of all metavertices and metabows of Metagraphy describes the overall structure of TDP. To solve the problems of the organization of design and control in a distributed environment of DOF we propose to use multiagent approach involving the construction of multiagent network model (MANM), within which it is provides to distribure primary and secondary design tasks and assign roles to each of the members of the functional group, as well as to definite sanctions and requirements for their experience. Implementation of MANM DOF is as follows: 1. Modeling environment in which control and support of concurrent engineering will be made. 2. Coordination of work of MANM units using multi-agent system of design and control. 3. Accumulation of knowledge, skills and experience of staff in databases of relevant agents. 4. Simulations of situations and behavior of agents in these situations, forecasting their solutions with agent-subordinator. Ability to work remotely and use of funds distributed by CAD allows the agent (the developer) to solve problems in a multi-project mode, i.e. at the same time to be involved on different projects that are similar to each other by the nature of the performed work. The transition to the implemented methods in a distributed environment of DOF allows significantly reduce the time of construction engineering, reduce human error arising at different stages of the design process, improve the quality of manufactured products and to reduce the time to make changes to the developed project.