Amacoia a multiagent system for designing flexible assembly lines

AMACOIA (approche multiagents pour la conception d'installations d'assemblage) is a tool for designing flexible assembly lines. Its objective is to determine the functional specifications of the equipment (manipulators, fixtures, grippers, conveyors, etc.) and the organizational structure (cells, workstations) for the least expensive assembly line able to assemble a product (or a family of products) within the contract cycle time. The design process is implemented by two interacting multiagent systems. One searches through the assembly sequence space, and the other searches through the assembly line space. The resulting assembly line is built by negotiation and self-organization of the agents. Both multiagent systems are regulated by simulated annealing to optimize the technological cost of the assembly line.