Multi-agent hybrid shop floor control system

A manufacturing system is composed of many activities that can be monitored and controlled at different levels of abstraction. A shop floor can be considered an important level at which to develop a Computer Integrated Manufacturing system (CIM). However, a shop floor is the dynamic environment where unexpected events continuously occur, and impose changes to planned activities. To deal with this problem, the shop floor should adopt an appropriate control system that is responsible for the coordination and control of the manufacturing physical flow and information flow. In this paper, a hybrid control system is described with a shop floor activity methodology called Multi-Layered Task Initiation Diagram (MTD). The architecture of the control model identifies three levels; i.e. the shop floor controller (SFC), the intelligent agent controller (IAC) and the equipment controller (EC). The methodology behind the development of the control system is an intelligent multi-agent paradigm that enables the shop floor control system to be an independent, autonomous, and distributed system, and to achieve an adaptability to change the manufacturing environment.