Other Issues

This chapter considers some important issues relating to development of agent-based concurrent design and manufacturing systems, including: agent encapsulation, human-machine interaction, system dynamics, design and manufacturability assessment, distributed dynamic scheduling, legacy problems and other mature technologies and tools. There are two distinctly different approaches to agent encapsulation in agent-based design and manufacturing systems: functional decomposition and physical decomposition. In functional decomposition, agents are used to encapsulate modules assigned to functions such as order acquisition, product design, process planning, scheduling, material handling, transportation management, and product distribution. Agent-based design and manufacturing systems usually involve both human and artificial agents. Agent-based concurrent design and manufacturing systems may have long life times. Agent based approaches provide a natural way to design and implement manufacturing enterprise integration and supply chain management within heterogeneous environments. Agent technology, however, provides a possible way to reuse legacy systems within an open environment, provided that they possess sufficiently good programmable interfaces.