MAS March Madness

Good Morning Everybody,
I just received an invitation to attend a full day workshop on MAS for Production and logistics hosted at the University of Twente. The one catch is that this workshop is on 27 March - the same day Mark Hoogendoorn was supposed to talk to LARGE. So, here are my questions to the group:
1) Who would like to attend the event at the University of Twente?
2) Should we go as a group?
3) When would be a good day to host Mark if we all go to Enschede on the 27th?

Here is the workshop announcement to help you in answering these questions.

OMPL seminar:

Agent-based control of Production and Logistics: theory, applications, and prospects

March 27, 2008: 10:00-18:00
University of Twente, Enschede

With invited talks by:
Jos van Hillegersberg, University of Twente (NL)
Sunderesh Heragu, University of Louisville (USA)
Han La Poutré, CWI and Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (NL)

In recent years there has been a growing interest in distributed control within the production and logistics domain due to the necessity of greater adaptability and flexibility to changes in the market demand. Agent technology is considered an approach that holds high promises for developing such systems. Multi-agent systems (MAS) are believed to be particularly suited for decentralized systems in real-time and dynamic environments. Because problems are solved locally, these systems should (1) be able to deal with a high level of complexity, (2) require less information exchange than central control methods, (3) respond fast to unexpected events, and (4) reduce system nervousness compared to global optimization. In this seminar we provide a short introduction into agent-theory and present applications of agent-based control of production and logistics.

In the morning we have three invited talks; by Jos van Hillegersberg, Sunderesh Heragu, and Han La Poutré. Peter Schuur will facilitate the discussions. In the afternoon, Martijn Mes will defend his thesis on this topic.

Below we have included the program information. Full abstracts and biographies will be available at our website www.mb.utwente.nl/ompl/agent-seminar. Please register before March, 18th by sending an e-mail to m.r.k.mes@utwente.nl.

Program:
Date: March 27th, 2008, 10:00-18:00
Location: Building Logica (nr 65), University of Twente, Enschede

10:00 – 10:15 Welcome ( Peter Schuur)
10:15 – 10:45 Prof. Dr. Jos van Hillegersberg (University of Twente)
Multi-agent systems: introduction and applications
10:45 – 11:30 Prof. S.S. Heragu (University of Louisville)
Multi-agent systems: warehousing
11:30 – 12:00 Coffee break
12:00 – 12:45 Prof. dr. ir. Han La Poutré (CWI, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven)
Multi-agent systems: transportation
13:00 Lunch
14:45 Introductory talk in Room SP2 (Martijn Mes)
15:00 Public defense in Room SP2 (Martijn Mes)
Sequential Auctions for Full Truckload Allocation
16:30 – 18:00 Drinks and closing

The department OMPL looks forward to seeing you March 27th!

Martijn Mes