Madureira, Ana MariaPereira, Ivo2013-04-152013-04-152010978-90-481-9150-5978-90-481-9151-2http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/1270Scheduling is a critical function that is present throughout many industries and applications. A great need exists for developing scheduling approaches that can be applied to a number of different scheduling problems with significant impact on performance of business organizations. A challenge is emerging in the design of scheduling support systems for manufacturing environments where dynamic adaptation and optimization become increasingly important. In this paper, we describe a Self-Optimizing Mechanism for Scheduling System through Nature Inspired Optimization Techniques (NIT).engSelf-optimizationMulti-agent learningAutonomic computingMulti-agent systemsNature inspired optimization techniquesbook part2013-04-1110.1007/978-90-481-9151-2_74