Agent-based Dynamic Scheduling for Distributed Manufacturing

Manufacturing enterprises are facing great challenges to improve their production efficiency and profitability in order to survive in a globally competitive market. Agent-based manufacturing scheduling technology provides a promising way to address these challenges. This technology can well address both dynamic changes and unpredictable disturbances in the manufacturing shop floor locally without disruptions to regular production — a problem that cannot be solved by traditional centralised planning and scheduling systems. It can significantly improve equipment-utilisation rates, thereby improving the efficiency and productivity of manufacturing enterprises. This chapter provides a brief research literature review on agent-based distributed manufacturing scheduling, presents some of our recent R&D results in this area, and discusses key issues in deploying this technology in industry.