Self-organized production based on agent theory

Abstract

Because of the large amounts of time and money involved, the restructuring of factory layouts in response to new business conditions occurs only at very infrequent intervals. The research approach presented in the following paper aims to facilitate continuous factory adaptation by shifting factory-planning tasks to decentralized areas. These decentralized areas, represented by production agents, are expected to coordinate their internal production locations amongst themselves on market principles and thereby keep the factory structure in a continuous process of updating. To facilitate decentralized structure planning, the agents are empowered to coordinate their orders. The price–date relationship will be introduced as a tool by means of which order management can be simplified as part of decentralized production planning and control and be integrated in self-organized production.

Keywords:

• Self-organization
• multi-agent systems
• production planning and control
• factory planning

Acknowledgements

The research work presented here was done within a project funded by the German Science Foundation (project WI 377/54-1).

Hans-Peter Wiendahl, born in 1938; studied mechanical engineering at the Engineering School in Dortmund, at the RWTH Aachen (industrial engineering) and the MIT (USA); 1970 PhD; until 1972 supervising engineer and habilitation under Prof. Opitz at the RWTH Aachen. Until 1979 directive function in planning and technology at Sulzer Escher Wyss GmbH in Ravensburg. Since 1979 head of the Institute of Production Systems and Logistics (IFA) at the University of Hanover.

Thomas Harms, born in 1973; studied industrial engineering at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Braunschweig and at the University of Rhode Island (USA). Since 1999, research scientist in the Factory Planning section at the Institute of Production Systems and Logistics (IFA) at the University of Hanover.