Multi-agent based real-time production scheduling method for radio frequency identification enabled ubiquitous shopfloor environment

The lack of timely feedback shopfloor information during manufacturing execution stage leads to significant difficulties in achieving real-time production scheduling. To address this problem, an overall architecture of multi-agent based real-time production scheduling is presented to close the loop of production planning and control. Several contributions are significant. Firstly, wireless devices such as radio frequency identification (RFID) are deployed into value-adding points in a ubiquitous shopfloor environment to form Machine Agent for the collection and processing of real-time shopfloor data. Secondly, Capability Evaluation Agent is designed to optimally assign the tasks to the involved machines at the process planning stage based on the real-time utilization ration of each machine. The third contribution is a Real-time Scheduling Agent for manufacturing tasks scheduling/re-scheduling strategy and methods according to the real-time feedback. Fourthly, a Process Monitor Agent model is designed for tracking and tracing the manufacturing execution based on a critical event structure. Finally, a case is used to demonstrate the proposed multi-agent based real-time production scheduling models and methods. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.