Author supplied: A manufacturing process can be described by a sequence or combination of production steps. Based on this approach a manufacturing system has been developed that is capable to produce several different products in parallel. A batch size of one unit is possible and the production is pull-driven. The manufacturing system is based on agent technology and a special so-called product agent collects information about the assembly process. This agent will be connected to the actual product and can guide the disassembly process at the end of the products life. The agent will show the inverse steps to be taken to take a product apart. This approach can be used in the agent based manufacturing process described in this paper but the concept can also be used for other manufacturing systems. The paper discusses the possibilities as well as the restrictions of the method proposed here.
Presented at the International Conference on Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing (FAIM) 23 - 26 June 2015 at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. Authorsupplied abstract: ABSTRACT Customized, on-demand manufacturing is growing through the use of new paradigms and technologies. Agile Manufacturing, cyber physical systems, and reconfigurable systems are examples of these changes. To provide high-mix, low-volume production there is a need for dynamic behaviour and manufacturing machines that can handle a large variety of services. Manufacturing systems can be made more dynamic by using agent-based technology. However, the reconfigurable aspect of these machines has yet to be explored. This paper investigates the possibility to adapt, i.e., reconfigure the hardware of manufacturing machines based on the current manufacturing demand. Using a simulation for a working agent-based platform with reconfiguration capabilities, this paper validates the effects of reconfigurable hardware to change capacity when producing a variety of products in a dynamic production environment. The paper continues to investigate required strategies to effectively use reconfiguration and counter the effects of disturbances that are likely to happen in such systems.
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Author supplied: In a production environment where different products are being made in parallel, the path planning for every product can be different. The model proposed in this paper is based on a production environment where the production machines are placed in a grid. A software entity, called product agent, is responsible for the manufacturing of a single product. The product agent will plan a path along the production machines needed for that specific product. In this paper, an optimization is proposed that will reduce the amount of transport between the production machines. The effect of two factors that influence the possibilities for reductions is shown in a simulation, using the proposed optimization scheme. These two factors are the redundancy of production steps in the grid and the
