Enhanced agents in shared factory: Enabling high-efficiency self-organization and sustainability of the shared manufacturing resources

Abstract

Abstract Shared factory (SharedF), succeed from the sharing economy, is defined as a kind of fenceless plant which enables high-efficiency self-organization and sustainability of the shared manufacturing resources. This paper proposes a brand-new Enhanced Self-organizing Agent (ESA) in the context of sustainable SharedF, which helps the shared manufacturing resources realize cross-sharing with self-organizing communication and negotiation mechanisms. ESA is a kind of dynamic software and hardware integration, which can sense and pre-process the real-time external social contexts, have the ability of self-decision makings and self-learning, and socialize with other ESAs. Then, the definition, components, operational logic, classification, evolution, and self-organizing interactions of ESAs are proposed. After that, by illustrating a 3D-printing SharedF prototype, it is proved that the ESAs in SharedF is an economical and efficient organizational architecture, which can gain the utilization of the shared manufacturing resources and fit the idea of sustainable manufacturing. This work gives a reliable and flexible way to reconfigure the idle or excess shared resources that minimize negative environmental impacts while conserving energy and natural resources.