Abstract
This chapter presents a method for designing the structure of reconfigurable manufacturing systems for a contract manufacturer based on the use of co-operative co-evolutionary agents. The aim is to determine the structure of a reconfigurable manufacturing system that can be converted from one configuration to another to manufacture the different products of the customers of the contract manufacturer. The approach involves multiple computational agents where each agent is allocated to each partner for whom the contract manufacturer is to manufacture parts. Each agent synthesises a machine configuration for manufacturing the part for the company it is allocated to achieve minimum machining cost and at the same time cooperates with other agents to co-evolve the structure of the machine to minimise reconfiguration cost between different machine configurations.
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Young, N., Fathianathan, M. (2009). Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems Design for a Contract Manufacturer Using a Co-operative Co-evolutionary Multi-agent Approach. In: Wang, L., Nee, A. (eds) Collaborative Design and Planning for Digital Manufacturing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-287-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-287-0_5
Publisher Name: Springer, London
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