Production planning and control in flexibly automated manufacturing systems: current status and future requirements

Abstract

Starting from the observation that currently we lack the control policies to effectively establish and manage the operational flexibilities required by contemporary flexibly automated manufacturing systems, this paper articulates a proposition towards the development of a formal production planning and control framework for these environments. This framework essentially attempts to integrate recently emerging results on the representation and control of these environments through a bottom-up hierarchical modeling and analysis approach. Open research problems that will underly such an integration effort are identified, and potential solution approaches are briefly outlined.

Agent‐based architecture for manufacturing system control

“…Recently, researchers have attempted to apply intelligent agents and object-oriented modelling in developing FMS control systems (Kadar et al, 1998;Lei et al, 1998). The object-oriented modelling methods are appropriate modelling and implementation approaches to represent the flexibility, real time response of the complex agent-based manufacturing control systems (Reveliotis, 1999;Gambin et al, 1999). The object-oriented method is able to reduce the design complexity and increase the reusability of the FMS control software.…”

Design and analysis of agent-based FMS control systems

“…The O-O method is an appropriate modeling and implementation methodology to represent systems with flexibility and real time response. The O-O approach has been adopted in the development of agent-based FMS control systems (Fraile et al, 1999;Reveliotis, 1999;Gambin et al, 1999). O-O models are able to promote expandability, reusability and modifiability in the design of FMS control system.…”