Multi-agent based reconfigurable manufacturing execution system

Fierce market competition forces enterprises and manufacturing systems to organize the manufacturing resources dynamically to react to perturbations of market quickly. As the bridge between shop floor level and control level, Manufacturing Execution System (MES) should be flexible, adaptable, reusable and extendable. To meet these requirements, a two-fold hybrid multi-agent control architecture, which takes advantages of distributed and decentralized control architecture, and the functions of each agent are introduced. In this paper reconfigurable MES (RMES) is realized by a synergy of two concepts: reconfigurable manufacturing cell and blackboard architecture. RAW possesses some characteristics and functions of RMC to enable manufacturing resources to be reconfigured dynamically. As the core agent of the RIMES, configuration agent utilizes the blackboard architecture which has several attractive features such as explicit control, modularity, and structured interaction. To implement the framework, the reconfiguring process of RMES is established.