A control architecture for distributed production systems using a virtual cellular manufacturing and agents society based approach

This paper proposes a control architecture for distributed production systems using a virtual cellular manufacturing and agents based approach, as a natural way for the control of production systems. Actual production system controllers do not have the ability to respond effectively to the system dynamics and complexity. Because of that, much of the planning rules do not occur in the shop floor as planned. This contributes to the gap increase between the planning system and the control system. In order to reduce this gap, control rules and business rules must be implemented together. Here, virtual cellular manufacturing and distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) techniques based on multi-agents are utilized. Agents are modelled using high level Petri nets. Also, it shows the necessity of applying clustering and planning dynamic techniques to combine virtual cells and DAI techniques to obtain satisfactory solutions of the global control problem.