DPACS: a self-adaptive production activity control structure

We present the concept of a distributed production activity control structure (DPACS) and we prove that such a structure is self-adaptive. The first part introduces the concept of a DPACS as a set of entities considered as autonomous agents able to communicate with other agents to achieve a global production program split in many sub-tasks. Multicriteria algorithms supporting nonquantitative and estimated data are embedded into the decision support system of each agent of the DPACS to solve the task allocation problem. The second part presents the concept of self-adaptability applied to a production structure. This term describes the ability for a system to support random events and modification of the current structure of the production. We check if both DPACS and hierarchical structure support self-adaptivity. We show that such an integration is easier with the DPACS than the hierarchical one and we provide then a set of examples to illustrate the integration of self-adaptability feature into the DPACS