Agent-based manufacturing execution systems for short-series production scheduling

This paper presents the architecture of Agent-based Manufacturing Execution Systems dedicated for short-series production support. The functional models are based on the ANSI/ISA-95 (IEC/ISO 62264) standard. The workflow and information exchange for Manufacturing Operations Management are defined by ISA 95 and implemented under a dynamic Agent-based environment. The proposed system is organised as a fully heterarchical architecture, without a central administration or system orchestrators. Unlike most of the existing agent software that are based on Java, the proposed solution is based on Microsoft's Model-View-Controller and was created under the ASP.NET technology. Holons, which collect information from the real production system, are a Cyber Physical part of the application. Agents process information using Internet services that are available for human users and for the other agents as well. The proposed approach has been verified on the use case of the system that was created to support the production of electronic devices in the Prototyping Department of Continental Ingolstadt. The system model, applied communication mechanisms and examples of agents are presented in this paper. The research part of this paper is focussed on simulation-based planning for a short-series production schedule. The simulation results can be used to support the decision-making process.