An Agent-Based Approach for Dynamic Scheduling in Hybrid Flow Shops

Today, manufacturing enterprises must respond quickly to the ever-changing market environment in order to survive. At the same time, dynamic disturbances in production sites such as machine failures, reworking caused by quality problems, and changes of processing time and personnel will also have negative impacts on the effectiveness of the original plan. In order to ensure the feasibility of scheduling algorithms in highly dynamic environment, this paper presents agent-based rescheduling negotiation mechanisms with five dynamic disturbances, and verifies its feasibility through simulations. A multi-agent system structure with quick responses and simple communication networks is designed according to characteristics of hybrid flow shops, with which the processing of jobs can be easily traced back.