Welcome to MACS.
This is the project page for MACS. It has been created to coinside with the publication of the article "A MULTI-AGENT BASED COOPERATIVE APPROACH TO SCHEDULING AND ROUTING" published by Simon Martin, Djamila Ouelhadj, Patrick Beullens, Ender Ozcan, Angel A. Juan and Edmund.K. Burke, in the European Journal of Operational Research. 254 (2016), pp. 169-178 (doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2016.02.045)
The GitHub project page can be accessed through this link.
About MACS
MACS is an open source agent-based distributed framework where each agent is implementing a different metaheuristic/local search combination. Moreover, an agent continuously adapts itself during the search process using a direct cooperation protocol based on reinforcement learning and pattern matching. Good patterns that make up improving solutions are identified and shared by the agents. This agent-based system aims to provide a modular flexible framework to deal with a variety of different problem domains. We have evaluated the performance of this approach using the proposed framework which embodies a set of well known metaheuristics with different configurations as agents on two problem domains, Permutation Flow-shop Scheduling and Capacitated Vehicle Routing. The results show the success of the approach yielding three new best known results of the Capacitated Vehicle Routing benchmarks tested, while the results for Permutation Flow-shop Scheduling are commensurate with the best known values for all the benchmarks tested.
Papers
For the Agent platform. Please cite:
1. A MULTI-AGENT BASED COOPERATIVE APPROACH TO SCHEDULING AND ROUTING Simon Martin, Djamila Ouelhadj, Patrick Beullens, Ender Özcan, Angel A. Juan and Edmund.K. Burke, in the European Journal of Operational Research. 254 (2016), pp. 169-178 (doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2016.02.045) .
2. Cooperative Search for Fair Nurse Rosters Martin, Simon and Ouelhadj, Djamila and Smet, Pieter and Berghe, Greet Vanden and Özcan, Ender, Expert Systems with Applications, Vol 40 Number 16 (2013) pp 6674--6683
For the Metaheuristics used. Please cite:
1. Juan, A.; Lourenço, H.; Mateo, M.; Luo, R.; Castella, Q. (2014): “Using Iterated Local Search for solving the Flow-Shop Problem: parametrization, randomization and parallelization issues”. Int. Transactions in Operational Research, 21(1): 103-126
2. Juan, A.; Faulin, J.; Jorba, J.; Riera, D.; Masip; D.; Barrios, B. (2011): “On the Use of Monte Carlo Simulation, Cache and Splitting Techniques to Improve the Clarke and Wright Savings Heuristics”. Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 62, No. 6, pp. 1085-1097
3. Juan, A.; Faulin, J.; Ruiz, R.; Barrios, B.; Caballe, S. (2010): The SR-GCWS hybrid algorithm for solving the capacitated vehicle routing problem. Applied Soft Computing, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 215-224
4. Juan, A.; Faulin, J.; Ferrer, A.; Lourenço, H.; Barrios, B. (2013): “MIRHA: multi-start biased randomization of heuristics with adaptive local search for solving non-smooth routing problems”. TOP, 21: 109-132
5. Juan, A.; Faulin, J.; Jorba, J.; Caceres, J.; Marques, J. (2013): “Using Parallel & Distributed Computing for Solving Real-time Vehicle Routing Problems with Stochastic Demands”. Annals of Operations Research, 207: 43-65
How use MACS.
MACS is built up one the Java Agent Development Environment (JADE). To run our platform it is necessary to download the latest version of jade as a jar file. It is also important to obtain the jar file XMLCodec.jar from the addons page of JADE downloads. Instructions of how to run MACS can be found on or WIKI pages
About the Authors.
Dr Simon Martin is a Systems Engineer with BAE Systems based on the Isle of Wight. Previously he was a postdocoral researcher in the Deartment of Computing and Mathematics at the University of Stirling. If you would like to dicuss this work please email Simon
Dr. Angel A. Juan is Associate Professor of Operations Research & Analytics (accredited as Full Professor) in the Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunication Dept. at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC)
Dr. Ender Özcan is "Science and Innovation" Lecturer in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, working in the Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning Research Group (ASAP)
Dr. Djamila Ouelhadj is Reader in the Deartment of Mathematics at the University of Portsmouth
Dr. Patrick Beullens Dr Patrick Beullens is an Associate Professor in Mathematical Sciences at the University of Southampton
Professor Edmund Burke is Vice-Principal and Executive Dean at Queen Mary, University of London