Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
509092 | Computers in Industry | 2012 | 26 Pages |
Production management systems must constantly deal with unplanned disruptive events and disturbances such as arrivals of rush orders, raw material shortage/delays or equipment breakdowns along with a multitude of interactions in the supply chain which constantly demand on-line task rescheduling and order execution control. For responsiveness and agility at the shop-floor, a distributed design for manufacturing execution systems is proposed based on autonomic units that fill the gap between production planning and shop-floor control. An interaction mechanism designed around the concept of order and resource agents implementing the monitor-analyze-plan-execution loop is described. Generative simulation modeling of an autonomic manufacturing execution system (@MES) is proposed in order to evaluate emerging behaviors and macroscopic dynamics in a multiproduct batch plant. Results obtained for an industrial case study using a simulation model of the proposed @MES are presented. The usefulness of agent-based modeling and simulation as a tool for distributed MESs design and to verify performance, stability and disturbance rejection capability of an interaction mechanism is highlighted.
► Detailed design of an interaction mechanism for distributed production control. ► Generative simulation for behavior verification in multi-agent systems for MES design. ► Introducing the autonomic computing paradigm in shop-floor automation. ► Simulation results highlight robustness and stability of the autonomic MES.