Performance Evaluation of Contract Net-Based Heterarchical Scheduling for Flexible Manufacturing Systems

ABSTRACT

This article presents a heterarchical scheduling approach for flexible manufacturing systems. The approach adopts a multiagent cooperative problem solving paradigm by using a bidding mechanism based on the contract net protocol to generate the production plan and schedule. Overall, scheduling is implemented using a Production Reservation approach. A typical job shop testbed demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach by comparing its performance to heuristic dispatching rules. Production Reservation augmented with the heuristic dispatching rules has also been shown to be even more effective, and should prove especially valuable in large variety discrete part and assembly manufacturing processes.

Key Words:

• heterarchical scheduling
• multiagent systems
• contract net protocol
• production reservation
• FMS
• job shop
• distributed artificial intelligence