Evaluating a contract net-based heterarchical scheduling approach for flexible manufacturing

This paper discusses a heterarchical scheduling approach for flexible manufacturing systems. The workcells comprising the manufacturing process and the products to be generated are modeled as autonomous agents which interact dynamically to generate the production schedule for each product unit. The interaction scheme combines production reservation with a bidding mechanism using the contract net protocol. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated using simulation experiments that compare its performance to heuristic dispatching rules commonly used in industry