Agent-based modeling and mapping of a manufacturing system

Abstract

Considering the agent-based modeling and mapping of a manufacturing system, some system models are described in this paper, which include: domain-based hierarchical structure (DBHS), cascading agent structure (CAS), proximity relation structure (PRS), and bus-based network structure (BNS). In DBHS, one sort of agents, called static agents, individually acts as domain agents, resources agents, user interface agents and gateway agents. And the others, named mobile agents, are the brokers of task and process flow. Static agents representing a sub-system may itself be an agent-based network and should learn, as the mobile agents, to deal with new situations. Mobile agents move around the network domains taking advantage of the resources to fulfill their goals. In CAS, the authors used unified modeling language (UML) to build up an agent-based manufacturing system. It is said that the enterprise agent (the main agent) has factory agents together with some directly jurisdictional workshop agents, cell agents, and individual resource agents. Likewise, the factory agent has workshop agents together with some directly jurisdictional cell agents and individual resource agents, and so on. In PRS, the resources agents are located together by function and abilities. There is only one agent that behaves as the task-announcer. The communication just occurs among the proximity relational agents. BNS is very similar with human society, being connected with a network, some agents, such as “cost calculating”, being to just cope with matter-of-fact jobs. Some agents run as individual resources that can negotiate with each other and advertise a necessary message within the whole domain or a given group of agents. The administration just relies on the individual address of agents and the group ID code of agents.