The research proposed concerns the development of a multi-agent scheduling approach able to support manufacturing systems in different dynamic conditions. The negotiation protocol defined budget approach is based on a financial asset that each part obtains when it is released into the manufacturing system for processing. The part spends the budget to perform the manufacturing operations by the workstations; the virtual market in which part agent and workstation agents coordinate the decentralized system. A fuzzy tool is proposed to assign the budget to each part based on the objectives pursued. A simulation environment based on Rockwell ARENA® platform has been developed in order to test the proposed approach. The simulations are used to compare the proposed approach with classical dynamical scheduling approaches proposed in literature. The results show how the proposed approach leads to better results, and it can be selective among the different priority of the parts.
Performance Evaluation of Bidding-Based Multi-Agent Scheduling Algorithms for Manufacturing Systems
