Multi-agent Based Agile Intelligent Manufacturing Execution System

Intelligent Manufacturing Execution System (MES), the pop research in domestic and overseas manufacturing field, makes much sense to the manufacturing information and intelligence solution. This dissertation focuses on the multi-agent based intelligent MES in agile manufacturing enterprise, its main theoretic issues and key technologies are multi- agent system (MAS) modeling methodology, agents organization structure, agents com- munication and cooperation mechanism, and multi-agent and genetic algorithm based distributed hybrid scheduling. On this basis, the MES software with practicality to some extent is built. The main creativities and achievements of the dissertation are as follows: 1. The unified modeling language (UML) and graph transformation based MAS modeling method is presented, and the model in each requirement specification, analysis and design stage is described in detail. This method can fully abstract the agent characters, and it is a modular, reusable and available systemic modeling method. 2. The resource model and MES domain of agile intelligent manufacturing system are systemically analyzed. The requirements of multi-agent based MES are regularized. An agent encapsulation method is presented. It employs physical and functional approaches to recursively decompose the system according to enterprise organization structure and control strucature. 3. A hybrid agent organization structure of agile intelligent MES is constructed. It combines hierarchical architecture with facilitator architecture, and introduces the domain concept of network, satisfies the needs of different level agents with different styles and functions. Meanwhile, the dynamic logic manufacturing cell concept is adopted to imple- ment the dynamic alliance of virtual enterprise and the reconfiguration of this MES. 4. The multi-agent based agile intelligent MES model is presented, in which the ERP interface module, acting the information agency between this MES and ERP, is the core control center. It provides the design of MES, facility control and ERP information inte- gration system with a good reference. 5. The agent communication method, KQML based communication mechanism and CNP based cooperation method are presented. The KQML performatives are extended according to the needs of this system. And agents' cooperation relationships and portion of the functions in agile intelligent MES are established. 6. Combining the classical scheduling algorithm with distributed scheduling, a hybrid scheduling method is presented. The CNP is extended and used to express the agent negoti- ation. The operations of the scheduling genetic algorithm are designed, and its steps, example and simulation result are represented. As part of the scheduling, the event-driven and period based dynamic scheduling strategy is described detailedly. 7. The implementation architecture of agile intelligent MES is established. As a frame- work, the prototype of this system is built by adopting J2EE technologies and Grasshopper platform, and its runtime environment and example screens are represented. This system has been applied in the real manufacturing in Hongdu Aviation Industry Group.