A framework for distributed manufacturing applications

The new organisational structures used in world wide manufacturing systems require the development of distributed applications, which present solutions to their requirements. The work research in the distributed manufacturing control leads to emergent paradigms, such as Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMS) and Bionic Manufacturing Systems (BMS), which translates the concepts from social organisations and biological systems to the manufacturing world. This paper present a Framework for the development of distributed manufacturing applications, based in an agent-based architecture, which implements some Holonic and Bionic Manufacturing Systems concepts

Agent-based transportation planning compared with scheduling heuristics

Here we consider the problem of dynamically assigning vehicles to transportation orders that have di¤erent time windows and should be handled in real time. We introduce a new agent-based system for the planning and scheduling of these transportation networks. Intelligent vehicle agents schedule their own routes. They interact with job agents, who strive for minimum transportation costs, using a Vickrey auction for each incoming order. We use simulation to compare the on-time delivery percentage and the vehicle utilization of an agent-based planning system to a traditional system based on OR heuristics (look-ahead rules, serial scheduling). Numerical experiments show that a properly designed multi-agent system may perform as good as or even better than traditional methods

The Impact of Powers-of-Two Based Schedule on the Minimization of Inventory Costs in a Multi Product Manufacturing Environment

This paper discusses about the scheduling problem of a multi product manufacturing industry. Often there has been a problem of applying optimization algorithms to solve the makespan minimization criterion of a job shop due to its inherent NP-hard nature. It is therefore unrealistic to try obtaining a solution through a commercial solver in polynomial time. In this context, we propose a computationally effective heuristic, which is based on the powers-of-two policy in inventory, for solving the minimum makespan problem of job shop scheduling. The research discussed in the current paper is a real time scheduling problem faced by a large scale and complex turbine manufacturing job shop. It is worth noting that by integrating the material requirements planning (MRP) with the feasible schedule obtained, this policy also proves to be useful in minimizing the inventory costs

Design and development of a hybrid flexible manufacturing system : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Technology at Massey University

Volumes 1 and 2 merged.The ability of a manufacturing environment to be able to modify itself and to incorporate a wide variety of heterogeneous multi-vendor devices is becoming a matter of increasing importance in the modern manufacturing enterprise. Many companies in the past have been forced to procure devices which are compatible with existing systems but are not as suitable as other less compatible devices. The inability to be able to integrate new devices into an existing company has made such enterprises dependent on one vendor and has decreased their ability to be able to respond to changes in the market. It is said that typically 60% of orders received in a company are new orders. Therefore the ability of a company to be able to reconfigure itself and respond to such demands and reintegrate itself with new equipment requirements is of paramount importance. In the past much effort has been made towards the integration of shop floor devices in industry whereby such devices can communicate with each other so that certain tasks are able to be achieved in a single environment. Up until recently however much of this was carried out in a very much improvised fashion with no real structure existing within the factory. This meant that once the factory was set up it became a hard-wired entity and extensibility and modiflability were difficult indeed. When formalised Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) system architectures were developed it was found that although they solved many existing shortcomings there were inherent problems associated with these as well. What became apparent was that a fresh approach was required that took the advantages of existing architectures and combined them into an new architecture that not only capitalised on these advantages but also nullified the weaknesses of the existing systems. This thesis outlines the design of a new FMS architecture and its implementation in a factory environment on a PC based system

Insights on Multi-Agent Systems Applications for Supply Chain Management

In this paper, we review relevant literature on the development of multi-agent systems applications for supply chain management. We give a general picture of the state of the art, showing the main applications developed using this novel methodology for analyzing diverse problems in industry. We also analyze generic frameworks for supply chain modelling, showing their main characteristics. We discuss the main topics addressed with this technique and the degree of development of the contributions.Universidad de Sevilla V PPIT-USPiano della Ricerca Dipartimentale 2016-2018 of DICAR-UniC

Mediator-based communication, negotiation and scheduling for decentralised production management

Recent trends in industry towards autonomous and co-operative production systems and latest developments in data network technologies have created new opportunities for enhancing the co-operation of production networks. In order to take advantage of the emerged opportunities, an approach based on a software system called Mediator has been developed. The Mediator provides order planning support necessary to integrate decisionmaking and scheduling of several actors in decentralised business organisations. The approach will be demonstrated in the context of order planning in multi-site and supplychain production

Agent-based material transportation scheduling of AGV systems and its manufacturing applications

制度:新 ; 報告番号:甲3743号 ; 学位の種類:博士(工学) ; 授与年月日:2012/9/10 ; 早大学位記番号:新6114Waseda Universit

Agent based prototype for interoperation of production planning and control and manufacturing automation

This work describes a model for distributed dynamic Production Planning and Control (PPC) agent based system, which includes interoperation with manufacturing automation. It is presented a demonstration prototype involving distributed software agents and industrial equipment integration, which implements part of the developed model functionalities. Clients can send orders, and resources may apply for those orders fulfilment. Resources with orders allocated to, start automatically the required manufacturing operations. The prototype was implemented integrating several tools, including Lab VIEW and LEGO Mindstorms components. This is useful to validate the integration, proposed by the dynamic PPC model, between production planning processes and manufacturing execution operations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio