Multi-agent Simulation of Component Reuse Focusing on the Variation in User Preference

The efficiency and validity of product and component reuse should be evaluated as the balance of utility value, environmental load, and cost throughout whole product life cycle from the viewpoint of a society as well as those of individual users. This paper proposes an evaluation method for reuse focusing on this balance from both of societal and individual viewpoints. For evaluating these balances, multi-agent consumer model representing users with different preferences for products is introduced and an algorithm to find out near optimal solution of reuse is developed. A simplified simulation of reuse is conducted to demonstrate feasibility of our method.