Papers by Keyword: Multi-Agent System (MAS)

Abstract: This paper present the new approach of the Holonic Manufacturing Systems. The new concept take in consideration an associated or augmented property to belong a different concepts inspired from biological social live. The new challenge on the new millennium in manufacturing process conduct in a more sophisticated and diversification techniques to approach the planning and scheduling and finally the managing complex processing in industrial environment. The answer for new context of the globalization and the mass-customization is a high responsivness in a distributed space of orders, products, resources or other necessity. To be able to answer on to mass customization process is mandatory to have a high degree of flexibility. The last major modeling in the Holonic Manufacturing Systems and Multi-agent Systems try to integrate all the aspect could be a substantial contribution to a new value compare to the classical systems.

Abstract: The main purposes and challenges in supply chain management are reducing cost and time. Significantly, factors such as the competition of markets in the globe, limitation of energy, raw and virgin materials, environmental protection crisis and increasing of global population dramatically are causing unprecedented issues for the worldwide supply chains for providing goods and services to customers efficiently and effectively. The sustainability approach for Supply Chain Management (SCM) considers the 6Rs principles in four main stages of the supply chains: Pre-manufacture, Manufacture, Use and Post-use. The use of Multi-Agent System (MAS) prepares the most important requirements of an effective sustainable supply chain. At the same time, this agent-based approach provides reliable and agile systems, which will enable enterprises to accommodate ever changing needs of their customers in the future. In this article, the use of MAS for optimal Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) is reviewed and the integrated functioning of certain agents resulting in information sharing is also demonstrated. With this idea, an attempt is made to provide a MAS model for the SSCM. In the proposed model, each agent performs a specific function of the organization and shares information with other agents. In order to describe this multi-agent based approach, a simple case study is given to illustrate the sustainable supply chain operations.

Abstract: An intelligent reconfigurability model based on multi-agent theory was proposed in this paper to improve feasibility of automotive manufacturing system. Each production management department in automobile manufacturing enterprises was designed as an independent agent. The practicability and rationality of the manufacturing system model was simulated as communication and interactive between different agents in this multi-agent system through JAFMAS. The application of multi-agent model in the design of automobile manufacturing system can promote the reconfigurability and intelligent level of the system.

Abstract: The paper deals with system of global monitoring in technological systems through the use of artificial intelligence elements. The holons and agents are the artificial intelligence elements that can be used for creation of systems for active and continuous control of active members of technological equipments.

Abstract: In recent year, many countries across in the world have made traceability a compulsory procedure in the Supply Chain. The Supply Chain is distributed collaborative environments involves the acquisition and use of extensive informational and physical flows. The flows management seems a complex task for the actors of the multimodal transport chain which the transport is the major driver in a Supply Chain. The literature reviews throws light on the traceability in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) shows the lack of interoperability and flexibility in data management systems hinders the work of traceability. And it introduces the importance and complexity of multimodal transport operations. To ensure effective traceability all along this chain, we relied on the agent paradigm and the ontology which facilitate the integration of goods data in order to exploit and reuse. Indeed, to ensure communication and interoperability of these data we relied on Multi-Agent Systems, due to their characteristics of autonomy, sociability and responsiveness that are generally associated. The Multi-Agent Systems can build flexible systems whose behaviors are complex and complicated due to the combination of different types of agents. With a focus on the importance of the concept of the traceability, the objective of this work is to propose an intelligent system for the traceability of containerized goods in the context of multimodal transport: Intelligent Traceability System of Containerized Goods (i-TSCG).

Abstract: The importance of cooperation in the supply chain has led scholars to suggest diverse approaches for problems in the collaboration process. Cooperation refers to the integration of different parts of an organization or different organizations in supply chain to accomplish a collective set of tasks and to achieve mutual benefits. The use of modern information technology (IT) decision support systems is fast becoming an indispensable tool for designing and managing complex supply chain systems today. This study describes a model of intelligent framework for cooperation in the supply chain environment. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that agent technology can represent the supply chains by (a) reviewing intelligent agent applications for supply chain and (b) illustrating how a multi-agent system can provides a solution for supply chain cooperation. We review and synthesis existing applications in comparison to traditional and Internet-based technologies and critically evaluate agent technology applicability for supply chain management. This paper thus provides an intelligent framework for extended enterprise cooperation (i-SEEC) by adopting the techniques of the Semantic Web service and Multi-agents system. The proposed system can integrate different information technologies to make its behavior more intelligent and to catch more useful information from supply chain actors.

Abstract: The paper describes a three-stage framework for modelling of a discrete manufacturing system. It presents the self-configuration procedure for a distributed manufacturing control system with use of this framework. The procedure allows for the construction of the plug and produce distributed manufacturing control system, which requires the integration of unified, easy to reconfigure cooperative agents. Arena simulation environment (by Rockwell Automation) is used for examining the procedure.

Abstract: Efficient remanufacturing of end-of-life (EOL) products is crucial for environment friendly production. Disassembly is part of the remanufacturing and it is meant to obtain components and materials from end-of-life products. An essential performance objective of a disassembly process is the benefits it brings, that is the revenue brought by the retrieved parts and material, diminished by the cost of their retrieval operations. A decision must be taken to balance the disassembly production system. In this paper, a multi-agent system (MAS) is presented to optimize the remanufacturing process of EOL products. The MAS offers a synthesized information platform for various tasks, e.g. product/manufacturing information processing, disassembly sequencing, solution performance assessing, and processes scheduling. On one hand, the MAS could retrieve much information related design/manufacturing resources, by multi-level data obtaining mechanism. On the other hand, this information will make the prospective integrated environment for profitable remanufacturing system planning more feasible.

Abstract: This paper deals with the distributed model predictive control problem in multi-agent systems under fixed interaction topologies. we propose a distributed model predictive control schemes with guaranteed closed-loop stability. In this distributed structure, the problem is decomposed into a set of distributed optimal control problems. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is effective under fixed interaction topologies among subsystems.

Abstract: Islanded microgrid is an independent micro power system. The system has different kinds of distributed generations with different characteristics. The islanded microgrid makes its frequence control more difficult than the conventional grids. This presents a multi-agent based frequency control approach for islanded microgrid and discusses the characteristics of agents. The hierarchical multi-agent control framework is also proposed. The simulation results show that even in emergency conditions, the proposed frequency control approach based multi-agent system can maintain the frequency stability of islanded microgrid.