System Level Specification and Multi-agent Simulation of Manufacturing Systems

Abstract

Lately, multi-agent systems (MAS) are being exploited to solve emerging challenges in manufacturing processes that require adaptation, flexibility, and reconfigurability, which are important advantages over traditional centralized systems. The understanding, design and testing of such complex systems manufacturing processes based on distributed agents, and especially those with personal properties, is generally a difficult task. Multi-agent systems offer an alternative way to design and improve manufacturing processes and control systems due to their inherent abilities to adapt autonomously to emergence. Multi-agent simulation assumes a crucial role to analyze and improve the manufacturing process during the design phase. Indeed, it is well suited to simulate manufacturing processes that present complex phenomena like emergent behaviour and self-organization. This paper discusses the modeling and simulation of the steel converter process. The Systems Modeling Language (SysML) is used to illustrate the benefits of such tools in the manufacturing world on the specification of a steel converter process. Requirements diagrams are used to present the main requirements of the system. In addition, state machine diagrams are used to describe the activities of different steel converting process machines. Finally, block definition diagrams are also used to define the components of this process. A model of this process has been developed using SysML diagrams; and the simulation results are used to validate this model.