Agent-based flexible routing manufacturing control simulation system

Abstract

In this paper, we present a manufacturing simulation system based on autonomous agents and a dynamic price mechanism that explores routing flexibility and provides a programming language for modeling manufacturing environments, based on autonomous agents and a dynamic price mechanism. The simulation system contains a control simulation module and a manufacturing environment simulation module. The control simulation module consists of a collection of autonomous agents who negotiate with each other to reach job processing decisions based on negotiation protocols and built-in price adjustment algorithms. The manufacturing environment simulation module is an event-based simulation system that couples with an input simulation language called Flexible Routing Adaptive Control Simulation Language. The language can be used to model complicated manufacturing environments and to specify flexibility in part process plans. By integrating the control framework with the FRACS simulation system, a sophisticated test bed is created for research of different control and negotiation strategies. The simulation system allows quick turn around time for software prototyping, and the modeling language enables easy model adjustment and performance tuning. Many experiments in the control and scheduling of manufacturing systems have been conducted using this simulation system. Several of these experiments are discussed in this paper.