Supporting dynamic management in a multi-agent collaborative design system

In this paper, we propose a multi-agent collaborative design system in which human designers and software agents interact with each other, exchange design information and keep track of state information to assist with collaborative design. The hierarchical multi-agent system architecture offers a promising framework with their novel approaches for dynamically creating and managing design tasks in widely distributed and ever-changing design environments while the knowledge based design approach provide a foundation for supporting reusable design abilities. The storage of design knowledge and the collaborative design process involved in this environment are introduced in this paper. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.