A distributed control system employs a number of autonomous cooperative units that intercommunicate with bids and counter bids to allocate the production of a product among them. Bidding closure is obtained in an environment where each autonomous cooperative unit can propagate multi-threaded bidding...http://www.google.com.au/patents/US6647300?utm_source=gb-gplus-sharePatent US6647300 - Bidding partner cache for autonomous cooperative control system
