A cooperative game approach to a production planning problem

This paper deals with a production planning problem formulated as a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model that has a competition component, given that the manufacturers are willing to produce as much products as they can in order to fulfil the market’s needs. This corresponds to a typical game theoretic problem applied to the productive sector, where a global optimization problem involves production planning in order to maximize the utilities for the different firms that manufacture the same type of products and compete in the market. This problem has been approached as a cooperative game, which involves a possible cooperation scheme among the manufacturers. The general problem was approached by Owen (1995) as the “production game” and the core was considered. This paper identifies the cooperative game theoretic model for the production planning MILP optimization problem and Shapley Value was chosen as the solution approach. The results obtained indicate the importance of cooperating among competitors. Moreover, this leads to economic strategies for small manufacturing companies that wish to survive in a competitive environment

Telefacturing Based Distributed Manufacturing Environment for Optimal Manufacturing Service by Enhancing the Interoperability in the Hubs

Recent happenings are surrounding the manufacturing sector leading to intense progress towards the development of effective distributed collaborative manufacturing environments. This evolving collaborative manufacturing not only focuses on digitalisation of this environment but also necessitates service-dependent manufacturing system that offers an uninterrupted approach to a number of diverse, complicated, dynamic manufacturing operations management systems at a common work place (hub). This research presents a novel telefacturing based distributed manufacturing environment for recommending the manufacturing services based on the user preferences. The first step in this direction is to deploy the most advanced tools and techniques, that is, Ontology-based Protege 5.0 software for transforming the huge stored knowledge/information into XML schema of Ontology Language (OWL) documents and Integration of Process Planning and Scheduling (IPPS) for multijobs in a collaborative manufacturing system. Thereafter, we also investigate the possibilities of allocation of skilled workers to the best feasible operations sequence. In this context, a mathematical model is formulated for the considered objectives, that is, minimization of makespan and total training cost of the workers. With an evolutionary algorithm and developed heuristic algorithm, the performance of the proposed manufacturing system has been improved. Finally, to manifest the capability of the proposed approach, an illustrative example from the real-time manufacturing industry is validated for optimal service recommendation.This work has been supported by by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

PLATFORM-DRIVEN CROWDSOURCED MANUFACTURING FOR MANUFACTURING AS A SERVICE

Platform-driven crowdsourced manufacturing is an emerging manufacturing paradigm to instantiate the adoption of the open business model in the context of achieving Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS). It has attracted attention from both industries and academia as a powerful way of searching for manufacturing solutions extensively in a smart manufacturing era. In this regard, this work examines the origination and evolution of the open business model and highlights the trends towards platform-driven crowdsourced manufacturing as a solution for MaaS. Platform-driven crowdsourced manufacturing has a full function of value capturing, creation, and delivery approach, which is fulfilled by the cooperation among manufacturers, open innovators, and platforms. The platform-driven crowdsourced manufacturing workflow is proposed to organize these three decision agents by specifying the domains and interactions, following a functional, behavioral, and structural mapping model. A MaaS reference model is proposed to outline the critical functions and inter-relationships. A series of quantitative, qualitative, and computational solutions are developed for fulfilling the outlined functions. The case studies demonstrate the proposed methodologies and can pace the way towards a service-oriented product fulfillment process. This dissertation initially proposes a manufacturing theory and decision models by integrating manufacturer crowds through a cyber platform. This dissertation reveals the elementary conceptual framework based on stakeholder analysis, including dichotomy analysis of industrial applicability, decision agent identification, workflow, and holistic framework of platform-driven crowdsourced manufacturing. Three stakeholders require three essential service fields, and their cooperation requires an information service system as a kernel. These essential functions include contracting evaluation services for open innovators, manufacturers' task execution services, and platforms' management services. This research tackles these research challenges to provide a technology implementation roadmap and transition guidebook for industries towards crowdsourcing.Ph.D

Collaborative and adaptive supply chain planning

Dans le contexte industriel d'aujourd'hui, la compétitivité est fortement liée à la performance de la chaîne d'approvisionnement. En d'autres termes, il est essentiel que les unités d'affaires de la chaîne collaborent pour coordonner efficacement leurs activités de production, de façon a produire et livrer les produits à temps, à un coût raisonnable. Pour atteindre cet objectif, nous croyons qu'il est nécessaire que les entreprises adaptent leurs stratégies de planification, que nous appelons comportements, aux différentes situations auxquelles elles font face. En ayant une connaissance de l'impact de leurs comportements de planification sur la performance de la chaîne d'approvisionnement, les entreprises peuvent alors adapter leur comportement plutôt que d'utiliser toujours le même. Cette thèse de doctorat porte sur l'adaptation des comportements de planification des membres d'une même chaîne d'approvisionnement. Chaque membre pouvant choisir un comportement différent et toutes les combinaisons de ces comportements ayant potentiellement un impact sur la performance globale, il est difficile de connaître à l'avance l'ensemble des comportements à adopter pour améliorer cette performance. Il devient alors intéressant de simuler les différentes combinaisons de comportements dans différentes situations et d'évaluer les performances de chacun. Pour permettre l'utilisation de plusieurs comportements dans différentes situations, en utilisant la technologie à base d'agents, nous avons conçu un modèle d'agent à comportements multiples qui a la capacité d'adapter son comportement de planification selon la situation. Les agents planificateurs ont alors la possibilité de se coordonner de façon collaborative pour améliorer leur performance collective. En modélisant les unités d'affaires par des agents, nous avons simulé avec la plateforme de planification à base d'agents de FORAC des agents utilisant différents comportements de planification dits de réaction et de négociation. Cette plateforme, développée par le consortium de recherche FORAC de l'Université Laval, permet de simuler des décisions de planification et de planifier les opérations de la chaîne d'approvisionnement. Ces comportements de planification sont des métaheurisciques organisationnelles qui permettent aux agents de générer des plans de production différents. La simulation est basée sur un cas illustrant la chaîne d'approvisionnement de l'industrie du bois d'œuvre. Les résultats obtenus par l'utilisation de multiples comportements de réaction et de négociation montrent que les systèmes de planification avancée peuvent tirer avantage de disposer de plusieurs comportements de planification, en raIson du contexte dynamique des chaînes d'approvisionnement. La pertinence des résultats de cette thèse dépend de la prémisse que les entreprises qui adapteront leurs comportements de planification aux autres et à leur environnement auront un avantage concurrentiel important sur leurs adversaires

Multi Agent Systems in Logistics: A Literature and State-of-the-art Review

Based on a literature survey, we aim to answer our main question: “How should we plan and execute logistics in supply chains that aim to meet today’s requirements, and how can we support such planning and execution using IT?†Today’s requirements in supply chains include inter-organizational collaboration and more responsive and tailored supply to meet specific demand. Enterprise systems fall short in meeting these requirements The focus of planning and execution systems should move towards an inter-enterprise and event-driven mode. Inter-organizational systems may support planning going from supporting information exchange and henceforth enable synchronized planning within the organizations towards the capability to do network planning based on available information throughout the network. We provide a framework for planning systems, constituting a rich landscape of possible configurations, where the centralized and fully decentralized approaches are two extremes. We define and discuss agent based systems and in particular multi agent systems (MAS). We emphasize the issue of the role of MAS coordination architectures, and then explain that transportation is, next to production, an important domain in which MAS can and actually are applied. However, implementation is not widespread and some implementation issues are explored. In this manner, we conclude that planning problems in transportation have characteristics that comply with the specific capabilities of agent systems. In particular, these systems are capable to deal with inter-organizational and event-driven planning settings, hence meeting today’s requirements in supply chain planning and execution.supply chain;MAS;multi agent systems

Engineering coordination : eine Methodologie für die Koordination von Planungssystemen

Planning problems, like real-world planning and scheduling problems, are complex tasks. As an efficient strategy for handing such problems is the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy has been identified. Each sub problem is then solved independently. Typically the sub problems are solved in a linear way. This approach enables the generation of sub-optimal plans for a number of real world problems. Today, this approach is widely accepted and has been established e.g. in the organizational structure of companies. But existing interdependencies between the sub problems are not sufficiently regarded, as each problem are solved sequentially and no feedback information is given. The field of coordination has been covered by a number of academic fields, like the distributed artificial intelligence, economics or game theory. An important result is, that there exist no method that leads to optimal results in any given coordination problem. Consequently, a suitable coordination mechanism has to be identified for each single coordination problem. Up to now, there exists no process for the selection of a coordination mechanism, neither in the engineering of distributed systems nor in agent oriented software engineering. Within the scope of this work the ECo process is presented, that address exactly this selection problem. The Eco process contains the following five steps. • Modeling of the coordination problem • Defining the coordination requirements • Selection / Design of the coordination mechanism • Implementation • Evaluation Each of these steps is detailed in the thesis. The modeling has to be done to enable a systemic analysis of the coordination problem. Coordination mechanisms have to respect the given situation and the context in which the coordination has to be done. The requirements imposed by the context of the coordination problem are formalized in the coordination requirements. The selection process is driven by these coordination requirements. Using the requirements as a distinction for the selection of a coordination mechanism is a central aspect of this thesis. Additionally these requirements can be used for documentation of design decisions. Therefore, it is reasonable to annotate the coordination mechanisms with the coordination requirements they fulfill and fail to ease the selection process, for a given situation. For that reason we present a new classification scheme for coordination methods within this thesis that classifies existing coordination methods according to a set of criteria that has been identified as important for the distinction between different coordination methods. The implementation phase of the ECo process is supported by the CoPS process and CoPS framework that has been developed within this thesis, as well. The CoPS process structures the design making that has to be done during the implementation phase. The CoPS framework provides a set of basic features software agents need for realizing the selected coordination method. Within the CoPS process techniques are presented for the design and implementation of conversations between agents that can be applied not only within the context of the coordination of planning systems, but for multiagent systems in general. The ECo-CoPS approach has been successfully validated in two case studies from the logistic domain.Reale Planungsprobleme, wie etwa die Produktionsplanung in einer Supply Chain, sind komplex Planungsprobleme. Eine übliche Strategie derart komplexen Problemen zu lösen, ist es diese Probleme in einfachere Teilprobleme zu zerlegen und diese dann separat, meist sequentiell, zu lösen (divide-and-conquer Strategie). Dieser Ansatz erlaubt die Erstellung von (suboptimalen) Plänen für eine Reihe von realen Anwendungen, und ist heute in den Organisationsstrukturen von größeren Unternehmen institutionalisiert worden. Allerdings werden Abhängigkeiten zwischen den Teilproblemen nicht ausreichend berücksichtigt, da die Partialprobleme sequentiell ohne Feedback gelöst werden. Die erstellten Teillösungen müssen deswegen oft nachträglich koordiniert werden. Das Gebiet der Koordination wird in verschiedenen Forschungsgebieten, wie etwa der verteilten Künstlichen Intelligenz, den Wirtschaftswissenschaften oder der Spieltheorie untersucht. Ein zentrales Ergebnis dieser Forschung ist, dass es keinen für alle Situationen geeigneten Koordinationsmechanismus gibt. Es stellt sich also die Aufgabe aus den zahlreichen vorgeschlagenen Koordinationsmechanismen eine Auswahl zu treffen, die für die aktuelle Situation den geeigneten Mechanismus identifiziert. Für die Auswahl eines solchen Mechanismus existiert bisher jedoch kein strukturiertes Verfahren für die Entwicklung von verteilten Systems und insbesondere im Bereich der Agenten orientierter Softwareentwicklung. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird genau hierfür ein Verfahren vorgestellt, der ECo-Prozess. Mit Hilfe dieses Prozesses wird der Auswahlprozess in die folgenden Schritte eingeteilt: • Modellierung der Problemstellung und des relevante Kontextes • Formulierung von Anforderungen an einen Koordinationsmechanismus (coordination requirements) • Auswahl/Entwurf eines Koordinationsmechanismuses • Implementierung des Koordinationsverfahrens • Evaluation des Koordinationsverfahrens Diese Schritte werden im Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit detailliert beschrieben. Die Modellierung der Problemstellung stellt dabei den ersten Schritt dar, um die Problemstellung analytisch zugänglich zu machen. Koordinationsverfahren müssen die Gegebenheiten, den Kontext und die Domäne, in der sie angewendet werden sollen hinreichend berücksichtigen um anwendbar zu sein. Dieses kann über Anforderungen an den Koordinationsprozess formalisiert werden. Der von den Anforderungen getrieben Auswahlprozess ist ein Kernstück der hier vorgestellten Arbeit. Durch die Formulierung der Anforderungen und der Annotation eines Koordinationsmechanismus bezüglich der erfüllten und nicht erfüllten Anforderungen werden die Motive für Designentscheidungen dieses Verfahren expliziert. Wenn Koordinationsverfahren anhand dieser Anforderungen klassifiziert werden können, ist es weiterhin möglich den Auswahlprozess (unabhängig vom ECo-Ansatz) zu vereinfachen und zu beschleunigen. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird eine Klassifikation von Koordinationsansätzen anhand von allgemeinen Kriterien vorgestellt, die die Identifikation von geeigneten Kandidaten erleichtern. Diese Kandidaten können dann detaillierter untersucht werden. Dies wurde in den vorgestellten Fallstudien erfolgreich demonstriert. Für die Unterstützung der Implementierung eines Koordinationsansatzes wird in dieser Arbeit zusätzlich der CoPS Prozess vorgeschlagen. Der CoPS Prozess erlaubt einen ganzheitlichen systematischen Ansatz für den Entwurf und die Implementierung eines Koordinationsverfahrens. Unterstürzt wird der CoPS Prozess durch das CoPS Framework, das die Implementierung erleichtert, indem es als eine Plattform mit Basisfunktionalität eines Agenten bereitstellt, der für die Koordination von Planungssystemen verantwortlich ist. Im Rahmen des CoPS Verfahrens werden Techniken für den Entwurf und die Implementierung von Konversation im Kontext des agenten-orientiertem Software Engineerings ausführlich behandelt. Der Entwurf von Konversationen geht dabei weit über Fragestellung der Formatierung von Nachrichten hinaus, wie dies etwa in den FIPA Standards geregelt ist, und ist für die Implementierung von agentenbasierten Systemen im Allgemeinen von Bedeutung. Die Funktionsweise des ECo-CoPS Ansatzes wird anhand von zweierfolgreich durchgeführten Fallstudien aus dem betriebswirtschaftlichen Kontext vorgestellt

Self-Evaluation Applied Mathematics 2003-2008 University of Twente

This report contains the self-study for the research assessment of the Department of Applied Mathematics (AM) of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) at the University of Twente (UT). The report provides the information for the Research Assessment Committee for Applied Mathematics, dealing with mathematical sciences at the three universities of technology in the Netherlands. It describes the state of affairs pertaining to the period 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2008