An agent-based approach for integrated process planning and scheduling

  • Authors:

  • Xinyu Li;Chaoyong Zhang;Liang Gao;Weidong Li;Xinyu Shao

  • Affiliations:

  • State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074 Hubei, China;State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074 Hubei, China;State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074 Hubei, China;Faculty of Engineering and Computing, Coventry University, Coventry, UK;State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074 Hubei, China

  • Venue:
  • Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Traditionally, process planning and scheduling were performed sequentially, where scheduling was done after process plans had been generated. Considering the fact that these two functions are usually complementary, it is necessary to integrate them more tightly so that the performance of a manufacturing system can be improved greatly. In this paper, an agent-based approach has been developed to facilitate the integration of these two functions. In the approach, the two functions are carried out simultaneously, and an optimization agent based on an evolutionary algorithm is used to manage the interactions and communications between agents to enable proper decisions to be made. To verify the feasibility and performance of the proposed approach, experimental studies have been conducted and comparisons have been made between this approach and some previous works. The experimental results show the proposed approach has achieved significant improvement.