Decentralized Manufacturing System Research Articles

Orchestration constraints BlockChained smart contract and integrated digital twins manufacturing systems: ManuChain4.0-based application paradigm and case study

Decentralized manufacturing systems constrained by blockchain significantly enhances data security and process integrity. Nevertheless, intelligent workshops encounter hurdles related to scalability of nodes, efficiency in validation, configuration of process security, and management of online/offline operations, which pose challenges to the seamless application of blockchain in workshop manufacturing environments. This paper introduces an architecture based on BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) for integrating smart contracts and digital twins manufacturing systems. It explores effective strategies to address the challenges mentioned above, with the aim of enhancing integration and application approaches. (1) Utilizing a graphical model-driven solution for the visualization and configuration of manufacturing resources on the front end, creating a BPMN-driven orchestration diagram and an off-chain/on-chain interoperability model for manufacturing smart contracts, and investigating voting mechanisms and customization methods specific to smart contracts in workshop manufacturing; (2) The two-layer monitoring model based on blockchain 3.0 and Tangle-based verification backend is established by introducing Cached DTs to implement negotiation of smart contracts based on BPMN constraints at the upper level, and supporting device node expansion and verification mechanisms at the lower level, thereby realizing swift synchronization and comprehensive visualization across the entire manufacturing lifecycle; (3) Based on multiple open-source technologies, a decentralized intelligent workshop case that relies on distributed information management is constructed. The comprehensive experimental results underscore the technical superiority of the proposed system architecture.

Knowledge distillation-based information sharing for online process monitoring in decentralized manufacturing system

Knowledge distillation-based information sharing for online process monitoring in decentralized manufacturing system

Simulation-based comparison of the material and energy efficiency of decentralized urban manufacturing systems

Traditional centralized industrial mass-production systems facilitate the efficient use of resources such as time, labor and materials by making use of scale effects. However, centralized production systems can also lead to an increase in resource demands, e.g. due to overproduction of consumer goods. Therefore, decentralized production systems are increasingly receiving attention, especially in densely populated urban areas. Advantages can be the usage of locally sourced materials to substitute virgin raw materials, the proximity to customers and the targeted manufacturing of products according to the customers’ needs. But these approaches are in turn in conflict with scale effects. The question arises whether and how decentralized manufacturing systems can compensate for their expected efficiency disadvantages. This work examines relevant parameters of these manufacturing systems for various composures to identify favorable scenarios. The material and energy intensity of a production system for an exemplary case of an eyewear manufacturing system are investigated and analyzed by using a simulation approach.

A Generic Multi-Layer Architecture Based on ROS-JADE Integration for Autonomous Transport Vehicles.

The design and operation of manufacturing systems is evolving to adapt to different challenges. One of the most important is the reconfiguration of the manufacturing process in response to context changes (e.g., faulty equipment or urgent orders, among others). In this sense, the Autonomous Transport Vehicle (ATV) plays a key role in building more flexible and decentralized manufacturing systems. Nowadays, robotic frameworks (RFs) are used for developing robotic systems such as ATVs, but they focus on the control of the robotic system itself. However, social abilities are required for performing intelligent interaction (peer-to-peer negotiation and decision-making) among the different and heterogeneous Cyber Physical Production Systems (such as machines, transport systems and other equipment present in the factory) to achieve manufacturing reconfiguration. This work contributes a generic multi-layer architecture that integrates a RF with a Multi-Agent System (MAS) to provide social abilities to ATVs. This architecture has been implemented on ROS and JADE, the most widespread RF and MAS framework, respectively. We believe this to be the first work that addresses the intelligent interaction of transportation systems for flexible manufacturing environments in a holistic form.

The impact of liner shipping unreliability on the production–distribution scheduling of a decentralized manufacturing system

Liner shipping uncertainty affects global supply chains reliability seriously. The pressure from downstream forces the make-to-order manufacturer to face high penalty cost due to stochastic shipping lead-times. A new risk-averse model is proposed aimed at improving production scheduling reliability integrated with shipment assignments in terms of total operating cost. The closed form of the risk cost of job-shipment assignment under given reliability levels is formulated, which verifies the effects of shipping uncertainty on the production scheduling and operating cost. The computational and statistical evaluation demonstrate our approach can compensate the amplification effects of the high penalty level and shipping uncertainty.

An Agent-Based Factory Simulation Tool to Assess Energy Consumption in Decentralized Manufacturing Systems: Agent Types and their Tasks

Rising energy costs and volatile energy prices are motivation to integrate energy consumption with planning processes in manufacturing. Since centralized approaches for Manufacturing Control (MC) tend to ignore local energy related information, it is necessary to examine the potential of decentralized MC approaches. For this purpose, a factory simulation tool has been implemented. This paper presents the underlying assumptions behind the simulation tool and how the MC algorithms it uses are implemented using an agent-based simulation approach.

Optimizing Energy Consumption in a Decentralized Manufacturing System

The deployment of modern information and communication technologies (ICT) within manufacturing systems leads to the creation of so-called cyber-physical production systems that consist of intelligent interconnected production facilities. One of the expected features of cyber-physical production systems is found to be the capability of self-organization and decentralized process planning in manufacturing. The functionality as well as the benefit of such self-organization concepts is yet to be proved. In this paper, the implementation of a virtual test field for the simulation of manufacturing systems based on a multi-agent system modeling concept is presented and used to evaluate a concept of decentralized process planning. Thereby, special focus is laid on the impact on energy consumption. The simulation results show the potential for energy reduction in manufacturing by a decentralized process-planning concept and yields hints for further development of such concepts.

Human-robot Collaboration in Decentralized Manufacturing Systems: An Approach for Simulation-based Evaluation of Future Intelligent Production

The development towards decentralized manufacturing systems aims at increased flexibility and robustness by maintaining the level of productivity. In order to meet these requirements, human-robot collaboration is considered as basic framework within future intelligent manufacturing cells. For industrial implementation, the concepts of smart production need to be refined and their benefits have to be quantified. This paper introduces concepts for the design of decentralized manufacturing systems and a detailed simulation-based approach for evaluating the performance of the system. Particularly, the relationships between factory layout planning, production scheduling, and human-robot work distribution are investigated.

階層分散型生産システムにおける要素間のジョブの授受を考慮したスケジューリング手法の研究

階層分散型生産システムにおける要素間のジョブの授受を考慮したスケジューリング手法の研究

Trends towards Distributed Manufacturing Systems and Modern Forms for their Design

In the future, long-established paradigms of production will still have to continue to change in order to meet the demand for even more individuality, customer-specific product variants and shortest delivery times within the meaning of the term “production on demand”. Therefore, in the future, the concept of the Distributed Manufacturing by geographically distributed production systems plays an increasingly important role. New and innovative ways of organizing production operations will be needed. Particularly due to the increasingly loud request for a sustainable and ecologically production and distribution decentralized manufacturing systems are an ideal approach, because the production takes place closer to the customer. It needs modern organizational models for small, flexible and scalable production units in decentralized production networks, which take into account the local and individual customer needs and produce as possible locally. This paper presents the drivers for the trend towards decentralized and distributed manufacturing systems. In addition, the paper gives a complete overview of traditional and modern forms of geographically distributed production and the prospect of new and partly visionary development directions. The paper examines the range of the concept of Distributed Manufacturing starting from standardized factories to visionary generative manufacturing units according the concept of Cloud-Production.

Evaluating a Data Distribution Service System for Dynamic Manufacturing Environments: A Case Study

Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Europe struggle to incorporate industrial robots in their production environments, while large enterprises use these robots for large batch production only. The paradigm shift from mass production to mass personalization decreases batch sizes and changes the approach to implementation of industrial robots in manufacturing environments. It also opens doors for SMEs to further incorporate robots in their production environments. The goal of this research is to evaluate the suitability of a data-centric, distributed, decentralized manufacturing system for cooperation between robots and humans. A case is presented featuring cooperation between robots and humans. A control system is proposed based on distributed intelligence and decentralized control, to handle the rapidly expanding complexity in dynamic manufacturing environments. The communication in such a distributed environment is provided by a Data Distribution Service system; an extendible, flexible approach to communication. Key issues that are encountered in implementing the cooperation into the current industrial environments are identified. The proposed control system is projected on the case and evaluated for application suitability and expected performance.

Decentralized manufacturing systems review: challenges and outlook

During the last three decades the economic landscape has abandoned its local characteristics and evolved into a global and highly competitive economy. The market demands towards high product variety, the low human labour costs in specific locations, the evolution of Information and Communication Technologies, and specific social and political forces are the principal reasons towards globalization. The main trend currently outlining the development of manufacturing paradigms is the ever-increasing tendency in the direction of decentralization of manufacturing functions towards decentralized entities. This has caused a fundamental reorganization process of the manufacturing organizations in order to cope with this trend. Several critical issues rise in the control and management of such organizations. These criticalities are further compounded by the need to achieve mass customization of industrial products, as this greatly complicates the manufacturing and supply activities. Moreover, the modalities for the configuration and implementation of each of the distributed manufacturing typologies are identified. The purpose of this paper is to specify the main trends, issues, and sensitive topics that characterize the behaviour and performance of these production systems. Based on this review, a discussion over existing production concepts is performed.

An Agent Behavior Technique in an Autonomous Decentralized Manufacturing System

In this paper, we propose a technique for the communication between agents in the dynamic generation of a production plan in an autonomous production system using product agents, parts agents and assembly machine agents. A parts agent leads the promotion of processes in this type of assembly system. First, product agents create the assembly process model that contains the assembly sequence to complete the product. Next, product agents generate parts agents that have the assembly process model. Parts agents will be assembled by machines, with some communications between other agents. The proposed system is defined as an event driven architecture. The increase in the costs of communication between agents is polynomial in the number of the agents. Moreover, this system adjusts the production schedule dynamically using only local negotiation when conditions are changed. Finally, we show experimental results with simply examples.

207 分散型ジョブショップスケジューリングのための情報交換に関する研究 : 保管時間の伝達(OS2-2 先進システムにおける協調・連携II)

A framework for decentralized manufacturing systems is discussed from view point of homogeneous property of system elements in this paper. A job-shop scheduling problem is also formulated in order to consistently manage every production equipment such as machine tool, assembly robot, AGV, storehouse, material shelf in the manufacturing systems.

3304 自律型生産システムのためのエージェントの制御方法(OS3-3 先進生産システム)

3304 自律型生産システムのためのエージェントの制御方法(OS3-3 先進生産システム)

1104 製品エージェントに基づいた生産システムの構成とスケジューリング法(OS1 生産システムの設計・管理・評価)

In this research, a product agent is proposed for the configuration of an autonomous decentralized manufacturing system which flexibly responds to high-mix very-low volume production. A product agent has its own product model. A product agent can select the machine to manufacture the product by referring to machine data and negotiation with other product agents. When the material for the product enters the production line, the corresponding product agent is dynamically generated. The agent confers with other agents on the production machine to be used for each job. The method of achieving the negotiation was examined by generating a production schedule. By this trial implementation, the advantage of the proposed agent-negotiation method was shown.

Decentralized Job Shop Scheduling by Recursive Propagation Method (4th Report, Proposal of Message Exchanging Procedure for Cases Considering Cooperative Operations Among Machines)

Mutual dependence among machines in a decentralized manufacturing system is analyzed systematically in order to expand the applicability of recursive propagation method for scheduling, which is an information exchange procedure proposed by the author for management of machines. The dependence among machines is characterized by both the processes planning to manufacture a product and the operations associated with each process. In this paper, the types of the process and the operation are described in detail, and an improved recursive propagation method, which can cope with cooperative operations among plural machines, is proposed to make feasible schedules in complex manufacturing systems.

Decentralized Job Shop Scheduling by Recursive Propagation Method

A new information exchange method named recursive propagation is proposed in order to solve job shop scheduling problems in decentralized manufacturing systems. Each machine only has to notify the change of its plan to other machines which are directly influenced by the change. The effect of the change in the plan is directly fed back to the machine which notified the change. The change in the plan is notified to all the machines concerned by simple one-to-one communication among the machines, and the influence of the change caused by its action can be reported to the initiator through the same communication path. The proposed method is applied to a 20×10 job shop scheduling problem, and the feasibility of this approach is verified by simulations.

409 階層分散型生産システムのためのリアクティブスケジューリングシステム

409 階層分散型生産システムのためのリアクティブスケジューリングシステム

Multi-Objective Modelling of Manufacturing Systems. 3rd Report. Concurrent Approach of Rescheduling on Hierarchical and Decentralized Manufacturing Systems.

Production scheduling tasks are in general carried out hierarchically and concurrently, such as scheduling for manufacturing systems, for factories and for shops, by different persons and/or organizations. Therefore, a systematic procedure is eagerly required to change the schedules and to keep the consistency among the hierarchical scheduling tasks, when some unforeseen disruptions occur in the manufacturing systems. The objectives of the research are to establish a systematic method for supporting the rescheduling tasks and for keeping the consistency among the various layers of schedules of the hierarchical and decentralized manufacturing systems. Models for hierarchical production schedules are proposed, and rescheduling procedures are also developed based on the models. A rescheduling method is proposed to change the schedules and to keep the consistency among the schedules. A prototype of hierarchical and concurrent rescheduling system is developed and applied to the consistency management problems in the rescheduling tasks.