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Towards Alternatives for Agent Based Control in Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems

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Book cover Enabling Manufacturing Competitiveness and Economic Sustainability

Abstract

Most researchers in reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMSs) have used the agent based control (ABC) approach, because the capabilities of agent based software and their development platforms make it easier and quicker to test their research. Due to the reluctance of industries to adopt ABC, this paper considers the factors that would affect the choice of alternatives for ABC, with an emphasis on cell-level control rather than on factory-level control or production planning related aspects. The paper shows that design considerations include reconfiguration level, self-reconfiguration intelligence and controller platform splitting. Some design choices will lead to ABC having significant advantages, while others will allow the use of software approaches more often used in industry.

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Correspondence to Kobus Hoffman .

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Hoffman, K., Basson, A.H., le Roux, A. (2014). Towards Alternatives for Agent Based Control in Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems. In: Zaeh, M. (eds) Enabling Manufacturing Competitiveness and Economic Sustainability. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02054-9_40

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02054-9_40

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02053-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02054-9

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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