Evaluating a contract net-based heterarchical scheduling approach for flexible manufacturing

Author

Saad, A. ; Kawamura, K. ; Biswas, G. ; Johnson, M.E. ; Salama, A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, TN, USA

fYear

1995

fDate

10-11 Aug 1995

Firstpage

147

Lastpage

152

Abstract

This paper discusses a heterarchical scheduling approach for flexible manufacturing systems. The workcells comprising the manufacturing process and the products to be generated are modeled as autonomous agents which interact dynamically to generate the production schedule for each product unit. The interaction scheme combines production reservation with a bidding mechanism using the contract net protocol. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated using simulation experiments that compare its performance to heuristic dispatching rules commonly used in industry

Keywords

automatic guided vehicles; flexible manufacturing systems; materials handling; operations research; optimisation; production control; AGV; autonomous agents; contract net protocol; contract net-based heterarchical scheduling; flexible manufacturing systems; job shop control; materials handling; production schedule; Automatic control; Centralized control; Computer aided manufacturing; Computer architecture; Contracts; Flexible manufacturing systems; Job shop scheduling; Manufacturing systems; Production; Protocols;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Assembly and Task Planning, 1995. Proceedings., IEEE International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Pittsburgh, PA

Print_ISBN

0-8186-6995-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISATP.1995.518764

Filename

518764