A Service-Oriented Framework for Integration of Shop Floor Scheduling and Control

This paper presents an agent-based service-oriented framework to address the challenges for integrating real time shop floor scheduling and control in a multi-workcell environment. The proposed framework enables shop floor to adapt to the changes in the environment dynamically. Shop floor scheduling and control can address dynamic changes either within a workcell, such as machine breakdowns, or cooperatively amongst multiple workcells, for example to delegate a task that cannot be performed locally or to improve the performance of the workcell. A software simulation environment has been implemented to validate the proposed approach.