Managing complexity

The thesis of this book is that complexity of the environment in which we work and live offers new opportunities and that the best strategy for surviving and prospering under conditions of complexity is to develop adaptability to perpetually changing conditions. An effective method for designing adaptability into business processes using multi-agent technology is presented and illustrated by several examples, including adaptive, real-time scheduling of taxis, seagoing tankers, supply chains, and production processes. Additional case studies include adaptive servicing of the International Space Station, dynamic data mining, and distributed semantic processing.