Organizing collective behaviour in the job distribution problem

Abstract

A possibility of organizing a collective behaviour of executors, ensuring decentralized distribution of jobs in the process of production is being considered. As an example, a mechanical sector of a machine-building plant is being considered. A system of rules of local behaviour of workers ensuring the necessary distribution of jobs without the foreman's participation has been formulated. As the experiment has showed (simulating behaviour of such a system on a computer) the quality of functioning (the medium size of the queue, the throughput of the sector) is near to the quality which is being sought by an experienced foreman who has at his disposal full and reliable information about the whole system. The locality of the information being used is an essential factor for the system being proposed. The approach to the problem solving is being based on the use of the results obtained while considering the models of the automata collective behaviour. While simulating, each member of the collective presents itself as the finite automata. The fact of automata use, however, is not essential for the model, as far as the only supposition which is being used when formulating the rules of local behaviour is, that each member of the collective tries to increase its earnings. The results obtained while studying the model were the base of the experiment being planned in real conditions.