Behavioural validation of the ADACOR2 Self-organized holonic multi-agent manufacturing system

Global economy is driving manufacturing companies into a paradigm revolution. Highly customizable products at lower prices and with higher quality are among the most imposed influence factors. To respond properly to these external and internal constraints, such as work absence and machine failures, companies must be in a constant adaptation phase. Several manufacturing control architectures have been proposed throughout the years displaying more or less success to adapt into different manufacturing situations. These architectures follow different design paradigms but recently the decentralization and distribution of the processing power into a set of cooperating and collaborative entities is becoming the trend. Despite of the effort spent, there is still the need to empower those architectures with evolutionary capabilities and self-organization mechanisms to enable the constant adaption to disturbances. This paper presents a behavioural mechanism embed in the ADACOR2 holons. A validation procedure for this mechanism is also presented and results extracted. This validation is achieved through the use of a benchmark and results are compared with classical hierarchical and heterarchical architectures as also with the ADACOR.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Supply chains’ robustness: Challenges and opportunities

Nowadays robustness of supply chains, i.e. their ability to cope with external and internal disruptions and disturbances, gains more and more importance. The paper puts the topic into a broader scope, i.e. it also highlights the concept of robustness in other disciplines (especially in biology) and at the different levels of manufacturing. The main risks of supply chain operations together with some fundamental risk mitigation strategies are summarized. Measures of structural and operational robustness of supply chains are introduced, and the concept of a framework for evaluating supply chains robustness, complexity and efficiency is described in short. Challenges and opportunities related to the increase of robustness are outlined in the paper, with special emphasis on those which arise in the cyber-physical era

Design of a self-learning multi-agent framework for the adaptation of modular production systems

YesThis paper presents the design of a multi-agent framework that aids engineers in the adaptation of modular production systems. The framework includes general implementations of agents and other software components for self-learning and adaptation, sensor data analysis, system modelling and simulation, as well as human-computer interaction. During an adaptation process, operators make changes to the production system, in order to increase capacity or manufacture a product variant. These changes are automatically captured and evaluated by the framework, building an experience base of adjustments that is then used to infer adaptation knowledge. The architecture of the framework consists of agents divided in two layers: the agents in the lower layer are associated with individual production modules, whereas the agents in the higher layer are associated with the entire production line. Modelling, learning, and adaptations can be performed at both levels, using a semantic model to specify the structure and capabilities of the production system. An evaluation of a prototype implementation has been conducted on an industrial assembly system. The results indicate that the use of the framework in a typical adaptation process provides a significant reduction in time and resources required.This work was supported in part by the European Commission [grant agreement n. 314762]

Crowdsourcing Coordination: A Review and Research Agenda for Crowdsourcing Coordination Used for Macro-tasks

Crowdsourcing has become a widely accepted approach to leveraging the skills and expertise of others to accomplish work. Despite the potential of crowdsourcing to tackle complex problems, it has often been used to address simple micro-tasks. To tackle more complex macro-tasks, more attention is needed to better comprehend crowd coordination. Crowd coordination is defined as the synchronization of crowd workers in an attempt to direct and align their efforts in pursuit of a shared goal. The goal of this chapter is to advance our understanding of crowd coordination to tackle complex macro-tasks. To accomplish this, we have three objectives. First, we review popular theories of coordination. Second, we examine the current approaches to crowd coordination in the HCI and CSCW literature. Finally, the chapter identifies shortcomings in the literature and proposes a research agenda directed at advancing our understanding of crowd coordination needed to address complex macro-tasks.National Science Foundation grant CHS-1617820Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150620/1/Kim and Robert 2019 Preprint Chapter 2.pdfDescription of Kim and Robert 2019 Preprint Chapter 2.pdf : Preprint Versio