Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sistem Manufacturing
Sistem Manufacturing
Abstract: The intelligent manufacturing system is a solution to the problems of the 21st
centurys manufacturing industry. In this paper, the historical evolution of
manufacturing industry is outlined. According to the literature published during the last
decade, 34 modern manufacturing systems and production modes and 35 mathematical
methods for modern manufacturing system modeling are listed and summarized. An
intelligent object called Manufacturing Agent (MA) is proposed based on the
conceptual model of an agent that is being discussed and studied in Distributed
Artificial Intelligence (DAI) technology, and an agent-based intelligent manufacturing
system architecture is presented.
Key words: Agent, Intelligent manufacturing, Multi-agent system
1. Introduction
The coming century has been named as the age of knowledge economy. Manufacturing
industry is facing more and more challenges. Though different technical bottlenecks for
modern manufacturing have been or are being investigated, the real bottleneck is,
however, the lack of knowledge (Ann 1999). Efficient acquisition and utilization of
knowledge have been considered as the trump to win the competition in the knowledge
economy.
The base of the knowledge economy is the knowledge industry that is supported by the
production equipment and modes, science and technology, management philosophy,
etc., produced by the modern manufacturing system and technology. Fig.1 briefly
illustrates the significance of the modern manufacturing system and its relationship to
the knowledge economy.
During the historical development of industry, human society has experienced three
industrial revolutions. Currently, the world is undergoing a Hi-Tech industrial revolution
with information technology as its main feature. As summarized in Table1, the
manufacturing industry of the next century will be characterized by intensively
concurrent engineering based on information technologies such as digitalization,
computer network, artificial intelligence and the like. The focus of enterprise production
is shifting from quantity/quality to service including quality, price, and after service.
People are paying more attention to the individualization, involvement and responsive
requirements of product. The management of the enterprise is being transformed from a
centralized and independent model to cooperative and coordinated management, in
which the creativity of people will be given full play. The 21st centurys manufacturing
industry will be green. It does not damage but preserves and beautifies the
environment. It not only utilizes but also saves and renews natural resources. It will
play an important role in the harmonious development of humankind and nature.
Table 1: Features of the three economic periods and their comparison
Early
industrial
economy
1st industrial revolution
(steam engine)
2nd industrial revolution
(electricity)
Large scale economy
Large scale production
Labor
Production flowline
Interchangeability Manufacturing
Mechanization
Unit technology
Big batch
Developed industrial
economy
3rd industrial revolution
(atomic technology)
Knowledge-Based
economy
Hi-technology industrial
revolution (information
technology)
Speed economy
Integrated production
Capital
Automatic line
Stiffness/Flexibility
Integrated Manufacturing
Automation
Synthetic technology
Diversification
Focus of enterprise
Production
Management
Quantity
Quality
Centralization
Independent
Relationship to natural
Resource
Relationship to
Environment
Utilization of natural
resource
Damages environm-ent
Knowledge economy
Intensive production
Knowledge
Concurrent engineering
Distributed networks
Intelligent manufacturing
Digitization & network
Intelligent technology
Individualization, involvement and rapid response
Services (quality, price,
after service, etc.)
Cooperative, full play
of personal creativity
Preserve & renew
natural resource
Preserves & beautifies
environment
Industrial revolution
(marked technology)
Economy pattern
Main production mode
Main production factor
Production process
Production features
Key technology
Requirements to
Products
The manufacturing systems for the next century should possess the features of agility,
intelligence, rapid response and favor high quality products, small batch sizes,
individualization requirements, consumer involvement, and environmental
consciousness (Koren et al. 1999, Lu et al. 1999, Kimura et al. 1998, Zhang et al.1997,
Wiendahl and Scholtissek 1994). The manufacturing systems characterized by the above
features have been named as intelligent manufacturing systems on which extensive
Some of the above manufacturing systems and production modes have been maturely
applied to practical manufacturing areas and have dramatically reduced the lead time of
products. Some are still undergoing investigation or conceptualization. Behind these
manufacturing systems and production modes lies the continuous pursuit of design
intelligence, manufacturing intelligence and management intelligence, or the enterprise
intelligence as a whole.
3. Intelligent Mathematics for Modern Manufacturing System Modeling
In order to model increasingly complex manufacturing systems, numerous mathematical
methods, especially the so-called non-conventional mathematical tools, have been
widely used. Some applications of these mathematical methods in the manufacturing
arena have achieved exciting progress. Teti(1997) presented a list of intelligent
computing methods for manufacturing systems and summarized their respective
application aspects in design, planning, production and system level activities. Zhu
reviewed 35 mathematical methods employed in manufacturing system modeling and
manufacturing process controlling:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
Knowledge processor, a knowledge base system that stores and processes the
necessary knowledge for an agent to play the role the agent society has designed for
it.
Perception, a channel for an agent to receive information from the external world.
Effector, an interface for an agent to modify or influence the state of the agent
community.
Communication, a mechanism for an agent to exchange views with other members
in the agent society.
Objectives, a list of roles for an agent to play.
The MAS is an open and distributed system that is formed by a group of agents
combined with each other through a network for cooperatively solving a common
problem. The MAS has been applied in many areas. The modern manufacturing system,
which is a highly decentralized system, is one of the typical representatives of MAS
application. A great deal of research effort has been devoted to agent-based
manufacturing. Some leading manufacturers and government agencies in the USA are
claiming that agent-based manufacturing is the future for US manufacturing and agent
technology is the fundamental technology for implementing the agile manufacturing
vision (Baker 1998).
There is multifold advantage in using an agent-based approach for manufacturing. First,
manufacturing information is stored and processed in a distributed manner as opposed
to being stored in one large program. Second, it makes the incremental improvement of
the manufacturing system possible through the learning and cooperation in agents.
Third, it provides a promising method for enterprise integration.
Fig. 3: Model of MA
In Fig.4, the whole operation logic of a manufacturing enterprise is divided into 4 parts:
central part, management, planning, and production. Each part consists of a group of
MAs. The central MAs are designed for the leadership of the enterprise to coordinate
and control the operation of the whole enterprise. The management MAs execute the
management functions of the enterprise. The planning MAs arrange and allocate the
available and potential resources to support the profit seeking objectives of the
enterprise. And the production MAs conduct shop floor control and management of the
manufacturing. All these MAs are connected to the distributed enterprise network or
Intranet. This MA network is heterarchical in nature. Each MA has its own behavior
objectives and local knowledge about the manufacturing process. In this agent-based
manufacturing system, humans communicate with MAs through a special MA, for
example a Personal Assistant (PA) ( Pan and Tenenbaum 1991).
6. Concluding Remarks
This paper has outlined the historical evolution of manufacturing and enumerated the
main features of 21st century manufacturing. 34 modern manufacturing systems and
production modes and 35 mathematical methods for modern manufacturing system
modeling are listed and summarized. An intelligent object called Manufacturing Agent
(MA) is proposed based on the conceptual model of the software agent, and an agentbased intelligent manufacturing system architecture is presented.
In a multi-agent system, the objective of the system is achieved through the cooperation
of agents. Each agent has only local knowledge about the whole agent environment and
has only local behavior ability, however, the cooperative and coordinated interaction of
multiple agents usually results in a macro efficient system behavior that is robust,
flexible and error-tolerant. This kind of emergent intelligent behavior can be found in
many biological systems such as the ant colony, bird flocks, fish schools, and wolf
packs (Baker 1998). What makes agent-based manufacturing attractive is just this
emergent behavior intelligence.
To successfully employ agent-based technology in manufacturing, some fundamental
problems should be researched. They include the coordination mechanism of MAS, the
communication protocol of agent, behavior intelligence of agent, human involvement in
agent system, the formalized modeling of agent-base manufacturing, etc. It is
completely believable that the agent will have an impact on future manufacturing.
7. Acknowledgement
This research is supported by the Chinese National Science Foundation under grant
contract no. 59990470.
References
Ann K (1999) Teams-Whats Next?: From Fragmentation and Consciousness to Responsiveness by
Competence Management for Modular Manufacturing Learning, Annals of the CIRP, Vol. 48/2
Baker D (1998) A Survey of Factory Control Algorithms That Can Be Implemented in a Multi-Agent