![](bg8.png)
be sent to all agents in case a batch of parts needs to
be recalled. Such a message would be broadcast to all
agents. If an agent has a part that needs to be recalled
it can take measures to get that part replaced. For
the automotive industry a simple message on the car
dashboard should suffice. In other situations the agent
could contact the owner of a device to react. An im-
portant aspect in all situations is the possibility to re-
place parts easily. Nowadays, a lot of appliances exist
where replacement is extremely difficult or can only
be done by highly trained personal. Easy replacement
of parts should be an important aspect of the design
of an appliance.
In the future refurbish-agents could be introduced.
Refurbish-agents would purchase broken parts, and
offer refurbished parts on behalf of repair companies
or the lifecycle agent marketplace. This could ad-
dress shortage after the production of spare parts has
stopped.
The collected knowledge of all lifecycle agents for
a given product will result in valuable data on the re-
liability of parts. This information could be used to
determine the average lifetime of a part resulting in a
reasonable resale value of a used part.
The prototype marketplace should have a real auc-
tion possibility.
9 CONCLUSIONS
One of the primary issues regarding sustainability of
our current society is the way broken appliances are
discarded while most parts could be re-used. By cre-
ating a marketplace based on autonomous agents that
have all the information about the parts and subparts
of a certain product, the acquisition of spare parts will
become less complicated. Thus, electronic waste is
reduced, reducing environmental pollution.
Blockchains could be useful in multi-agent sys-
tems. In this use-case agents exchange information,
and perform negotiations by using a blockchain. The
main advantage of utilizing a blockchain instead of
traditional FIPA messages over HTTP is that transac-
tion history is recorded. Agents can then act based
on this information. Secondly, the demand for parts
is recorded using a blockchain, resulting in a knowl-
edge base containing reliable data about the parts of a
product.
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