The explicit organisational structure allows agent entrants in open multi-agent systems to know their positions in the organisation and cooperate to achieve mutual goals. In spite of its importance, there are few studies on automatic organisation generators that create explicit organisational structures for open systems. This paper introduces GoOrg, a proposal for automatically design organisations. Our approach uses as input a goals tree and other features such as necessary skills to achieve the goal, predicted workload and throughput. The output of GoOrg is a chart of a well-formed organisation. The generated structure, for instance, can be flatter or taller, accepting matrix connections or not, according to preferences whether there is a need for more coordination levels.
Generic or specific? Making sensible software design decisions
Doctoral Proposal - From goals to organisations: automated organisation generator for MAS
1. figs/logoufsc
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Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations:
automated organisation generator for MAS
Cleber Jorge Amaral1,2 and
Jomi Fred Hübner1
1Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC)
2Federal Institute of Santa Catarina (IFSC)
EMAS 2019 - 7th International Workshop on
Engineering Multi-Agent Systems
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
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Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
Objetives
Which one is the best?
How to choose the best chart?
Main objective: given goals and some extra information such as
necessary skills, design an organisational chart with allocated
resources.
PCB
Assembly
Apply
Paste
Place
components
Soldering
Components
HeatPick and
Place
Print
Buy Inputs
Buy
Components
Buy Other
Inputs
PurchasePurchase
PCB
Production
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
PCB
Assembly
Apply
Paste
Place
components
Soldering
Components
HeatPick and
Place
Print
Buy Inputs
Buy
Components
Buy Other
Inputs
PurchasePurchase
PCB
Production
Production
ManagerPurchasing
Coordinator
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator Components
Placer
Components
Welder
Purchaser
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
bob
alice alice
mary
tom
fred
paul
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
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figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
Objetives
Which one is the best?
How to choose the best chart?
To do so, it is expected to generate roles from the given inputs.
PCB
Assembly
Apply
Paste
Place
components
Soldering
Components
HeatPick and
Place
Print
Buy Inputs
Buy
Components
Buy Other
Inputs
PurchasePurchase
PCB
Production
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
PCB
Assembly
Apply
Paste
Place
components
Soldering
Components
HeatPick and
Place
Print
Buy Inputs
Buy
Components
Buy Other
Inputs
PurchasePurchase
PCB
Production
Production
ManagerPurchasing
Coordinator
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator Components
Placer
Components
Welder
Purchaser
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
bob
alice alice
mary
tom
fred
paul
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
4. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
Objetives
Which one is the best?
How to choose the best chart?
The roles will be structured as a chart, goals can be centralised in
a role, as well as coordination levels can be created or removed.
PCB
Assembly
Apply
Paste
Place
components
Soldering
Components
HeatPick and
Place
Print
Buy Inputs
Buy
Components
Buy Other
Inputs
PurchasePurchase
PCB
Production
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
PCB
Assembly
Apply
Paste
Place
components
Soldering
Components
HeatPick and
Place
Print
Buy Inputs
Buy
Components
Buy Other
Inputs
PurchasePurchase
PCB
Production
Production
ManagerPurchasing
Coordinator
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator Components
Placer
Components
Welder
Purchaser
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
bob
alice alice
mary
tom
fred
paul
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
5. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
Objetives
Which one is the best?
How to choose the best chart?
Finally, resources will be allocated testing if the organisation is
well-formed.
PCB
Assembly
Apply
Paste
Place
components
Soldering
Components
HeatPick and
Place
Print
Buy Inputs
Buy
Components
Buy Other
Inputs
PurchasePurchase
PCB
Production
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
PCB
Assembly
Apply
Paste
Place
components
Soldering
Components
HeatPick and
Place
Print
Buy Inputs
Buy
Components
Buy Other
Inputs
PurchasePurchase
PCB
Production
Production
ManagerPurchasing
Coordinator
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator Components
Placer
Components
Welder
Purchaser
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
bob
alice alice
mary
tom
fred
paul
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
6. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
Objetives
Which one is the best?
How to choose the best chart?
But which is the best organisational structure for the given
problem?
Components
Welder
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
bob
alice alice
mary
tom
fred
paul
PCB
Assembly
Apply
Paste
Place
components
Soldering
Components
HeatPick and
Place
Print
Buy Inputs
Buy
Components
Buy Other
Inputs
PurchasePurchase
PCB
Production
?
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
Purchaser
Purchaser
Production
cell supervisor
Production
cell supervisor
Production
cell supervisor
Paster
Applicator
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Placer
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Welder
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
?
?
Production
Manager
Purchaser Full Assembler
alice tom
paul
Assembling department
Purchases department
Components
Welder
tom
fred
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
7. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
Objetives
Which one is the best?
How to choose the best chart?
To produce thousands and heterogeneous PCB a wider structure of
production cells could be suitable.
Components
Welder
Components
Welder
tom
fred
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
bob
alice alice
mary
tom
fred
paul
PCB
Assembly
Apply
Paste
Place
components
Soldering
Components
HeatPick and
Place
Print
Buy Inputs
Buy
Components
Buy Other
Inputs
PurchasePurchase
PCB
Production
?
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
Purchaser
Purchaser
Production
cell supervisor
Production
cell supervisor
Production
cell supervisor
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
?
?
Production
Manager
Purchaser Full Assembler
alice tom
paul
Assembling department
Purchases department
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
8. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
Objetives
Which one is the best?
How to choose the best chart?
In simple cases the structure could also be simple with
multipurpose resources.
Components
Welder
Components
Welder
tom
fred
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
bob
alice alice
mary
tom
fred
paul
PCB
Assembly
Apply
Paste
Place
components
Soldering
Components
HeatPick and
Place
Print
Buy Inputs
Buy
Components
Buy Other
Inputs
PurchasePurchase
PCB
Production
?
Production
Manager
Purchasing
Coordinator
Purchaser
Assembling
Coordinator
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
Purchaser
Purchaser
Production
cell supervisor
Production
cell supervisor
Production
cell supervisor
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
Paster
Applicator
Components
Placer
Components
Welder
?
?
Production
Manager
Purchaser Full Assembler
alice tom
paul
Assembling department
Purchases department
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
9. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
Objetives
Which one is the best?
How to choose the best chart?
According Pattinson et al. (1987) [4]: "Organisation design is the
problem of choosing the best organisation class - from a set of
class descriptions - given knowledge about the organisation’s
purpose (goal, task, and constraints on the goal) and the
environment in which the organisation is to operate".
Burton et al. (2011) [1] defends that given necessary input, an
organisational generator is able to give as output organisational
aspects, such as, structure, goals definitions, strategy, how
leadership will work, which reward system will be used, among
others.
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
10. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
Automated organisational design by task planning
Self-organisation generators
Automated organisational structure generators
Some relate research regard to multi-agent task planners.
n
Initial State
System Description
Goals
Available Agents
Available Resources
Organizational Structure
Organizational Scheme
Organizational Norms
Task
Planner
Agents' Plans
System
Execution
Binded Agents-Roles
Binded Resources
Organization
Designer
Resources
AllocationRoles
Necessary Skills
Goals with properties
Predicted Workload
Necessary Resources
...
Organizational Norms
Organization
Necessary Skills
Goals with properties
Predicted Workload
Works: DOMAP [2] Sleight’s agent-driven planner [6]
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
11. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
Automated organisational design by task planning
Self-organisation generators
Automated organisational structure generators
Other approaches regard to self-organisations.
n
Initial State
System Description
Task
Planner
Agents' Plans
Initial State
System Description
Goals
Available Agents
Available Resources
Organizational Structure
Organizational Scheme
Organizational Norms
Task
Planner
Agents' Plans
System
Execution
Binded Agents-Roles
Binded Resources
Organization
Designer
Resources
AllocationRoles
Necessary Skills
Goals with properties
Predicted Workload
Necessary Resources
...
Works: [7]
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
12. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
Automated organisational design by task planning
Self-organisation generators
Automated organisational structure generators
There is also what is very close to this proposal which are the
explicit organisational structure generators.
g. chart
ments
urces
Initial State
System Description
Available Agents
Available Resources
Task
Planner
Agents' Plans
Initial State
System Description
Goals
Available Agents
Available Resources
Organizational Structure
Organizational Scheme
Organizational Norms
Task
Planner
Agents' Plans
System
Execution
Binded Agents-Roles
Binded Resources
Organization
Designer
Resources
AllocationRoles
Necessary Skills
Goals with properties
Predicted Workload
Necessary Resources
...
Init
System
Availa
Availab
Init
System
G
Availa
Availab
R
Neces
Goals w
Predict
Necessa
Works: ODML [3], KB-ORG [5]
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
13. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
GoOrg Approach
Challenges
Final remarks
Finally, GoOrg has not roles as input since it will create the roles.
The output can be very similar to explicit organisational structure
generators, maybe adding organisation schemes and norms.
g. chart
Initial State
System Description
Goals
Available Agents
Available Resources
Organizational Structure
Organizational Scheme
Organizational Norms
Task
Planner
Agents' Plans
System
Execution
Binded Agents-Roles
Binded Resources
Organization
Designer
Resources
AllocationRoles
Necessary Skills
Goals with properties
Predicted Workload
Necessary Resources
...
Organizational Norms
Necessary Skills
Goals with properties
Initi
System
G
Availa
Availab
R
Neces
Goals w
Predict
Necessa
Neces
Goals w
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
15. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
GoOrg Approach
Challenges
Final remarks
GoOrg can create explicit organisation structures which is
specially interesting in open systems
The result is a theoretically tested well-formed organisation
This approach potentially can be connected in other designing
process such as tasks planners
The main contribution is to answer "which is the best
structure for the given problem"?
From designing point of view the contribution is on the
creation of roles
From engineering point of view the contribution is the design
model which is splitting design and allocation.
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
16. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
GoOrg Approach
Challenges
Final remarks
Burton, R.M., Obel, B., Desanctis, G.: Organizational design:
a step-by-step approach (2011).
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511894961
Cardoso, R.C., Bordini, R.H.: A modular framework for
decentralised multi-agent planning. In: Proceedings of the
16th Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent
Systems. pp. 1487–1489. São Paulo, Brazil (2017)
Horling, B., Lesser, V.: Using quantitative models to search
for appropriate organizational designs. Autonomous Agents
and Multi-Agent Systems 16(2) (2008)
Pattison, H.E., Corkill, D.D., Lesser, V.R.: Chapter 3 -
instantiating descriptions of organizational structures. In:
Huhns, M.N. (ed.) Distributed Artificial Intelligence, pp. 59 –
96 (1987)
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or
17. figs/logoufsc
figs/logodas
Introduction
Automated organisation design
Proposal
GoOrg Approach
Challenges
Final remarks
Sims, M., Corkill, D., Lesser, V.: Automated organization
design for multi-agent systems. Autonomous Agents and
Multi-Agent Systems 16(2) (2008)
Sleight, J., Durfee, E.H.: Organizational design principles and
techniques for decision-theoretic agents. pp. 463–470. AAMAS
’13, International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and
Multiagent Systems, Richland, SC (2013)
Ye, D., Zhang, M., Vasilakos, A.V.: A Survey of
Self-organisation Mechanisms in Multi-Agent Systems. IEEE
Transactions On SMC: Systems 47(3) (2016)
Cleber Jorge Amaral Doctoral Proposal: From Goals to Organisations: automated or