Agent-Based Manufacturing Planning, Scheduling and Control

Planning is the process of selecting and sequencing activities such that they achieve one or more goals and satisfy a set of domain constraints. Scheduling is the process of selecting among alternative plans and assigning resources and times to the set of activities in the plan. High-level manufacturing control relates to the overall coordination of manufacturing resources, to make desired products. In agent-based manufacturing systems, agent technology is usually applied to high-level manufacturing control. MetaMorph uses an agent-based mediator-centric federation architecture. Federation multi-agent architectures require a substantial commitment to supporting intelligent agent interoperability through mediators. Static mediators use their classification mechanisms to learn from the system’s activity and to update the organizational knowledge of the system. The Active Mediators carry out control and mediation actions on clone agents. Clone agents are subsequently affected by dynamic changes in the task priorities. The system configures itself dynamically in response to internal and external changes.