Agent-based strategic planner for the production of samll lots of complex products: theoretical and practical perspectives

This paper presents a strategic planner that assists the decision-makers to take strategic decisions on short term to respond faster and efficiently to unexpected events in the ramp-up production of complex and highly customized products, namely in situations of peak of demand, late change requests and immature technology. This tool combines the flexibility of multi-agent systems with the optimization capability of mathematical optimization solvers. The application of the strategic planner is illustrated by playing iterative what-if games supporting implementation of mitigation strategies addressing a real use case of a peak demand of a specific product.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Frame-work Programme FP7 ARUM project, under grant agreement n° 314056info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A multi-agent system tool for strategic planning in small-lot production environments

The scale of output respectively sales matters in strategic and operations planning because it controls the degression of fixed costs, of learning curve effects (degression of average or perunit variable costs) or purchasing power that influences prime costs. But what is “small”? There is no clear quantitative definition of “small”, except that the minimum is 1. In the usecases of the ARUM project, airframers and producers of galley appliances, want to sell as much as possible of the same, just limited by the size of the markets for aircrafts and related appliances as well as the interplay of competitive forces [1]. The most sold aircrafts are the Airbus A320 family with an average output of about 180 units per year (6486 in total) [2] and the Boeing 737 family with 230 units per year (8350 in total) [3]. And Iacobuccy HF (IHF) in the long average produced about 1000 galley appliances per year. Compared to car industry that is very small. Compared to the size of the aviation market it is very reasonable. IHF is world marked leader for airworthy coffee makers, On the other side, in the purchasing market also the size of the bill of materials of the product matters. In the cases of the A320 and the B737 that are about 4 million parts per unit, a very big scale, while the galley appliances consist of some hundred parts – a small scale. The differences translate into variations of the leeway of pricing, of market shares and of the profitability. For the purpose of this paper and with regard to the use-case respectively the demonstration scenario it will be sufficient to have a look at the impact of small lots in the sales markets in aviation industry.In this article, the authors present the results that were developed with the partial support of ARUM (Adaptive pRodUction Management, http://arum-project.eu/) project. The ARUM project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 314056.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Parallelising multi-agent systems for high performance computing

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are seen as a promising technology to face the current requirements of large-scale distributed and complex systems, e.g., autonomous traffic systems or risk management. The application of MAS to such large scale systems, characterised by millions of distributed nodes, imposes special demanding requirements in terms of fast computation. The paper discusses the parallelisation of MAS solutions using larger-scale distributed High End Computing platforms as well as High Performance Computing as a suitable approach to handle the complexity associated to collaborative solutions for large-scale systems

What-if game simulation in agent-based strategic production planners

In the nowadays highly unstable manufacturing market, companies are faced, on a daily basis, with important strategic decisions, such as “does the company has the necessary capacity to accept a high volume order?” or “what measures need to be implemented if the product demand increases x% a year?”. Decision-makers, i.e. company’s managers, rely on their experience and insights supported by classical tools to take such decisions. Classical mathematical solvers or agent-based systems are typical architectural solutions to implement strategic planning tools to support decision-makers on this important task. Within the ARUM (Adaptive Production Management) project, a hybrid strategic planning tool was specified and developed, combining the optimization features of classical solvers with the flexibility and agility of agent systems. This paper briefly presents such architecture and focuses on the generation of the “what-if game” mechanism to support the generation of more intelligent and dynamic planning solutions.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007- 2013 under grant agreement n° 314056.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

10102 Abstracts Collection -- Grand Challenges for Discrete Event Logistics Systems

From 03/08/2010 to 03/12/2010, the Dagstuhl Seminar 10102 ``Grand Challenges for Discrete Event Logistics Systems\u27\u27 was held in Schloss Dagstuhl~--~Leibniz Center for Informatics. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

Self-organisation of mobile robots in large structure assembly using multi-agent systems

Competition between manufacturers in large structure assembly (LSA) is driven by the need to improve the adaptability and versatility of their manufacturing systems. The lack of these qualities in the currently used systems is caused by the dedicated nature of their fixtures and jigs. This has led to their underutilisation and costly changeover procedures. In addition to that, modern automation systems tend to be dedicated to very specific tasks. This means that such systems are highly specialised and can reach obsolescence once there is a substantial change in production requirements. In this doctoral thesis, a dynamic system consisting of mobile robots is proposed to overcome those limitations. As a first knowledge contribution in this doctoral thesis, it is investigated under which conditions using mobile robots instead of the traditional, fixed automation systems in LSA can be advantageous. In this context, dynamic systems are expected to be more versatile and adaptive than fixed systems. Unlike traditional, dedicated automation systems, they are not constrained to gantry rails or fixed to the floor. This results in an expanded working envelope and consequently the ability to reach more workstations. Furthermore, if a product is large enough, the manufacturer can choose how many mobile robots to deploy around it. Accordingly, it was shown that the ability to balance work rates on products and consequently meet their due times is improved. For the second knowledge contribution, two fundamentally different decision-making models for controlling mobile agents in the complex scheduling problem are investigated. This is done to investigate ways of taking full advantage from the potential benefits of applying mobile robots. It is found that existing models from related academic literature are not suited for the given problem. Therefore, two new models had to be proposed for this purpose. It was plausible to use an agent-based approach for self-organisation. This is because similarly to agents, mobile robots can perform independently of one-another; and have limited perception and communication abilities. Finally, through a comparison study, scenarios are identified where either model is better to use. In agreement with much of the established literature in the field, the models are shown to exhibit the common advantages and disadvantages of their respective architecture types. Considering that the enabling technologies are nearing sufficient maturity for deploying mobile robots in LSA, it is concluded that this approach can have several advantages. Firstly, the granularity and freedom of movement enables much more control over product completion times. Secondly, the increased working envelope enables higher utilisation of manufacturing resources. In the context of LSA, this is a considerable challenge because products take a very long time to get loaded and unloaded from workstations. However, if the product flow is steady, there are rare disruptions and rare production changes, fixed automation systems have an advantage due to requiring much less time (if any) for moving and localising. Therefore, mobile systems become more preferred to fixed systems in environments where there is an increasing frequency of disruptions and changes in production requirements. The validation of agent-based self-organisation models for mobile robots in LSA confirms the expectations based on existing literature. Also, it reveals that with relatively low amounts of spare capacity (5%) in the manufacturing systems, there is little need for sophisticated models. The value of optimised models becomes apparent when spare capacity approaches 0% (or even negative values) and there is less room for inefficiencies in scheduling

Industrial automation based on cyber-physical systems technologies: Prototype implementations and challenges

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) is an emergent approach that focuses on the integration of computational applications with physical devices, being designed as a network of interacting cyber and physical elements. CPS control and monitor real-world physical infrastructures and thus is starting having a high impact in industrial automation. As such design, implementation and operation of CPS and management of the resulting automation infrastructure is of key importance for the industry. In this work, an overview of key aspects of industrial CPS, their technologies and emerging directions, as well as challenges for their implementation is presented. Based on the hands-on experiences gathered from four European innovation projects over the last decade (i.e. SOCRADES, IMC-AESOP, GRACE and ARUM), a key challenges have been identified and a prioritization and timeline are pointed out with the aim to increase Technology Readiness Levels and lead to their usage in industrial automation environments.The authors would like to thank for their support the European Commission, and the partners of the EU FP6 SOCRADES (www.socrades.net), EU FP7 GRACE (www.grace-project.org), EU FP7 IMC-AESOP (www.imc-aesop.eu) and EU FP7 ARUM (www.arum-project.eu) projects, for their fruitful support and discussions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

SkyCSR: Optimal Communication Methods for Coordinating Ground Support in a Private and General Aviation Setting

Delays due to miscommunication of between the pilot and ground service providers are increasing. The objective of this project is to develop a new method of communication between pilots, line service technicians and customer service agents. This will be achieved first through an investigation into current methods and state of the industry, followed by a survey conducted with a group of pilots and flight schools. This culminates in a web application that will take the deficiencies identified in the survey, to make sure ground service or fuel orders are explicitly clear and minimize the probability of a mis-fueling, overlooked fueling, or anything else that could cause a delayed ground service and unhappy customer. The web application, named SkyCSR was developed in Visual Studio in an ASP.NET environment. It has an area for FBO’s to login and view inbound arrivals as well as upcoming fuelings. The application also has a place for pilots to input their ground service needs and also a separate page for fuel orders. During the two iterations, the web application received positive feedback, with most of those who reviewed it saying it would be useful to have. The down fall, is that pilots use so many apps already that it is difficult to get a stand-alone app, like this one, off the ground so to speak. The recommendation for this web application would be to try an integrate it with already existing applications and websites (i.e. ForeFlight, FltPlan.com) that are already widely used and have saturated the pilot market, but not yet developed a side for the Fixed Base Operators