Agent based Manufacturing Simulation for Efficient Assembly Operations

This study experiments with the manufacturing efficiency by layout change of a factory by means of agent-based autonomous production scheduling, using the virtual factory on a multi-agent simulation system. As infrastructure software for agent based simulation, the artisoc(c) is used. In this virtual factory, three types of agents are equipped. Users can alter a configuration such as input new jobs, adjusting a machine setting, etc, with monitoring conditions of agents. As a result, by adjustment of the agent's behavior with shop floor detail, the assembly schedule becomes more effective. The experiment is carried out to show that local negotiations contribute to global optimization when resources in the factory are effectively distributed and shared. In this paper, the effectiveness of job-list cleanup method is shown. In addition, the scheduling influence is simulated by the communication range of agents. A part agent chooses a machine, by the length of a job list and the conveyance cost. But the communication cost between agents increases with the size of the communication range. From experimental results, when extending the communication range simply, the conclusion is reached that optimization did not necessarily result in progress.