A novel approach for multi-agent-based Intelligent Manufacturing System

In the recent years, the competition of shortening the development cycle of new products is more and more fierce. Given the shortcomings of traditional scheduling algorithm in Intelligent Manufacturing, the architecture of multi-agent-based Intelligent Manufacturing System is put forward, which represents the basic processing entity. The architecture is based on the methodology of multi-agent systems (MAS) in distributed artificial intelligence (DAI). The multi-agent system has some common characteristics, such as distribution, autonomy, interaction and openness, which are helpful to transform the traditional architecture into a distributed and cooperative architecture in an Intelligent Manufacturing System. To develop a multi-agent-based scheduling system for Intelligent Manufacturing, it is necessary to build various functional agents for all the resources and an agent manager to improve the scheduling agility. In this paper, the proposed architecture consists of various autonomous agents that are capable of communicating with each other and making decisions based on their knowledge. The architecture of Intelligent Manufacturing, the scheduling optimization algorithm, the negotiation processes and protocols among the agents are described in detail. A prototype system is built and validated in an illustrative example, which demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed approach. The experiments prove that the implementation of multi-agent technology in Intelligent Manufacturing System makes the operations much more flexible, economical and energy-efficient.