Production degrees of freedom as manufacturing system reconfiguration potential measures

2008 ◽  
Vol 222 (10) ◽  
pp. 1301-1314 ◽  
Author(s):  
A M Farid ◽  
D C McFarlane
Keyword(s):  
Manufacturing Systems ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Manufacturing System ◽  
Automated Manufacturing ◽  
Reconfigurable Manufacturing ◽  
Multi Agent Systems ◽  
Automated Manufacturing Systems ◽  
System Reconfiguration ◽  
Multi Agent ◽  
Changes Over Time

In recent years, many design approaches have been developed for automated manufacturing systems in the fields of reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMSs), holonic manufacturing systems (HMSs), and multi-agent systems (MASs). One of the principle reasons for these developments has been to enhance the reconfigurability of a manufacturing system, allowing it to adapt readily to changes over time. However, to date, reconfigurability assessment has been limited. Hence, the efficacy of these design approaches remains inconclusive. This paper is the first of two in this issue to address reconfigurability measurement. Specifically, it seeks to address ‘reconfiguration potential’ by analogy. Mechanical degrees of freedom have been used in the field of mechanics as a means of determining the independent directions of motion of a mechanical system. By analogy, manufacturing degrees of freedom can be used to determine independent ways of production. Furthermore, manufacturing degrees of freedom can be classified into their production and product varieties. This paper specifically focuses on the former to measure the product-independent aspects of manufacturing system ‘reconfiguration potential’. This approach will be added to complementary work on the measurement of ‘reconfiguration ease’ so as to form an integrated reconfigurability measurement process described elsewhere [1—5].

Facilitating ease of system reconfiguration through measures of manufacturing modularity

2008 ◽  
Vol 222 (10) ◽  
pp. 1275-1288 ◽  
Author(s):  
A M Farid
Keyword(s):  
Manufacturing Systems ◽  
Manufacturing System ◽  
Automated Manufacturing ◽  
Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems ◽  
Reconfigurable Manufacturing ◽  
Automated Manufacturing Systems ◽  
System Reconfiguration ◽  
Qualitative Understanding ◽  
System Interfaces ◽  
Changes Over Time

In recent years, many design approaches have been developed for automated manufacturing systems in the fields of reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMSs), holonic manufacturing systems (HMSs), and multiagent systems (MASs). One of the principle reasons for these developments has been to enhance the reconfigurability of a manufacturing system, allowing it to adapt readily to changes over time. However, to date reconfigurability assessment has been limited. Hence the efficacy of these design approaches remains inconclusive. This paper is the second of two in this issue to address reconfigurability measurement. Specifically, ‘reconfiguration ease’ has often been qualitatively argued to depend on the system's modularity. For this purpose, this paper develops modularity measures in a three-step approach. Firstly, the nature of typical manufacturing system interfaces is discussed. Next, the qualitative understanding underlying existing modularity measures is distilled. Finally, these understandings are synthesized for a manufacturing system context. This approach forms the second of two pillars that together lay the foundation for an integrated reconfigurability measurement process described elsewhere.

SEARCH-BASED TESTING OF MULTI-AGENT MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS FOR DEADLOCKS BASED ON MODELS

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (04) ◽  
pp. 417-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
NARIMAN MANI ◽  
VAHID GAROUSI ◽  
BEHROUZ H. FAR
Keyword(s):  
Manufacturing Systems ◽  
Autonomous Agents ◽  
Manufacturing System ◽  
Deadlock Detection ◽  
Multi Agent Systems ◽  
Automated Manufacturing Systems ◽  
Testing Technique ◽  
Design Models ◽  
Multi Agent ◽  
Test Requirements

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) have been extensively used in the automation of manufacturing systems. However, similar to other distributed systems, autonomous agents' interaction in the Automated Manufacturing Systems (AMS) can potentially lead to runtime behavioral failures including deadlocks. Deadlocks can cause major financial consequences by negatively affecting the production cost and time. Although the deadlock monitoring techniques can prevent the harmful effects of deadlocks at runtime, but the testing techniques are able to detect design faults during the system design and development stages that can potentially lead to deadlock at runtime. In this paper, we propose a search based testing technique for deadlock detection in multi-agent manufacturing system based on the MAS design models. MAS design artifacts, constructed using Multi-agent Software Engineering (MaSE) methodology, are used for extracting test requirements for deadlock detection. As the case study, the proposed technique is applied to a multi-agent manufacturing system for verifying its effectiveness. A MAS simulator has been developed to simulate multi-agent manufacturing system behavior under test and the proposed testing technique has been implemented in a test requirement generator tool which creates test requirements based on the given design models.

scholarly journals A Pareto-based genetic algorithm for multi-objective scheduling of automated manufacturing systems

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 168781401988529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Zan ◽  
Zepeng Wu ◽  
Cheng Guo ◽  
Zhenhua Yu
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Algorithm ◽  
Performance Optimization ◽  
Manufacturing Systems ◽  
Manufacturing System ◽  
Automated Manufacturing ◽  
Scheduling Problems ◽  
Automated Manufacturing Systems ◽  
Multi Objective ◽  
Automated Manufacturing System ◽  
And Performance

This work focuses on multi-objective scheduling problems of automated manufacturing systems. Such an automated manufacturing system has limited resources and flexibility of processing routes of jobs, and hence is prone to deadlock. Its scheduling problem includes both deadlock avoidance and performance optimization. A new Pareto-based genetic algorithm is proposed to solve multi-objective scheduling problems of automated manufacturing systems. In automated manufacturing systems, scheduling not only sets up a routing for each job but also provides a feasible sequence of job operations. Possible solutions are expressed as individuals containing information of processing routes and the operation sequence of all jobs. The feasibility of individuals is checked by the Petri net model of an automated manufacturing system and its deadlock controller, and infeasible individuals are amended into feasible ones. The proposed algorithm has been tested with different instances and compared to the modified non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II. The experiment results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Design and Implementation of Emulators for a Real-World Automated Manufacturing Systems Using Scenario

2006 ◽  
Vol 505-507 ◽  
pp. 1141-1146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Sheng Huang ◽  
Ta Hsiang Chung ◽  
Yuan Lin Wen
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Test ◽  
Real World ◽  
Manufacturing Systems ◽  
Manufacturing System ◽  
Automated Manufacturing ◽  
Automated Manufacturing Systems ◽  
Manufacturing Equipment ◽  
Manufacturing Cell ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Cell Controller

This paper demonstrates how to design and implement the emulators for a real-world automated manufacturing system (AMS). In order to develop and validate system control software for managing AMSs, most laboratories have constructed an experimental test using actual manufacturing equipment. These experimental systems typically occupy a large amount of lab space and require considerable human expertise to operate. In this paper, a scenario-based development environment for the equipment design and implementation are described. The intended advantage of the proposed environment is that, the designer can make an experimental test in a computer and does not need the actual manufacturing equipment. The proposed environment can be used to design and implement a real-world automated manufacturing cell controller at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST). We start with a new methodology to model the operation sequences of the system’s equipment (i.e., machine) called scenario. Modeling methodology is the key to the application of scenarios to automated manufacturing systems. The scenarios methodology is able to clearly depict the communication signals for the equipment. And it also can be used to model the resource utilization features within a manufacturing system. Using scenario, we have developed an emulator for an automated manufacturing cell which faithfully replicates the operating characteristics of an ensemble of physical equipment that would typically comprise an AMS.

Open Problems in Deadlock Control for Flexible Manufacturing Systems by Using Petri Nets

2011 ◽  
Vol 88-89 ◽  
pp. 134-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhi Wu Li ◽  
Abdulrahman M. Al-Ahmari
Keyword(s):  
Flexible Manufacturing ◽  
Manufacturing Systems ◽  
Manufacturing System ◽  
Flexible Manufacturing System ◽  
Structural Complexity ◽  
Deadlock Prevention ◽  
Automated Manufacturing ◽  
Critical Systems ◽  
Automated Manufacturing Systems ◽  
Open Problems

Deadlocks are a rather undesirable situation in a highly automated flexible manufacturing system. Their occurrences often deteriorate the utilization of resources and may lead to catastrophic results in safety-critical systems. This work surveys the open problems in deadlock control for automated manufacturing systems. The focus is deadlock prevention due to its large and continuing stream of efforts. A control strategy is evaluated in terms of computational complexity, behavioral permissiveness, and structural complexity of its deadlock-free supervisor. This study provides readers with a conglomeration of the open problems in this area and facilitates them in finding a suitable topic for their research.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document