Multi level contract net protocol based on holonic manufacturing system implement to industrial networks

Abstract

This paper presents a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) that cooperated with the holonic manufacturing system (HMS) with automatic material handling devices via industrial networks. The HMS is described as an intelligent manufacturing system that employs multi-agent system with negotiation protocols. The traditional HMS's negotiation protocol usually used the contract net protocol (CPN) and multi-level contract net protocol (MCPN). This paper develops a cooperative system that applies the concept of HMS to implement a distributed control system for automatic warehouse and FMS. Results from simulation indicated that our approach is able to improve the overall system flexibility. The system is able to reconfigure the re-order points, increase the system fault tolerances, and provide the dynamic rescheduling.