The Cambridge Packing Cell — A Holonic Enterprise Demonstrator

Fletcher, M.; McFarlane, Duncan; Lucas, Andrew; Brusey, James; Jarvis, Dennisc

doi:10.1007/3-540-45023-8_51

Cited by 24 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 2 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Initially, the automation presented in the real ship was simulated in the laboratory using MATLAB/Simulink and then implemented using physical equipment and controllers. Fletcher et al (2003) described the implementation of a holonic packing cell at the assembly cell of University of Cambridge, using the JACK Intelligent Agents TM platform. In this application, the holonic control system is responsible to assembly Gillete TM packages into customer-tailored gift boxes.…”

Section: Industrial Implementationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agent-based distributed manufacturing control: A state-of-the-art survey

Leitão

2009

Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence

702

349

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

a b s t r a c tManufacturing has faced significant changes during the last years, namely the move from a local economy towards a global and competitive economy, with markets demanding for highly customized products of high quality at lower costs, and with short life cycles. In this environment, manufacturing enterprises, to remain competitive, must respond closely to customer demands by improving their flexibility and agility, while maintaining their productivity and quality. Dynamic response to emergence is becoming a key issue in manufacturing field because traditional manufacturing control systems are built upon rigid control architectures, which cannot respond efficiently and effectively to dynamic change. In these circumstances, the current challenge is to develop manufacturing control systems that exhibit intelligence, robustness and adaptation to the environment changes and disturbances. The introduction of multi-agent systems and holonic manufacturing systems paradigms addresses these requirements, bringing the advantages of modularity, decentralization, autonomy, scalability and reusability. This paper surveys the literature in manufacturing control systems using distributed artificial intelligence techniques, namely multi-agent systems and holonic manufacturing systems principles. The paper also discusses the reasons for the weak adoption of these approaches by industry and points out the challenges and research opportunities for the future.

show abstract

Section: Industrial Implementationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agent-based distributed manufacturing control: A state-of-the-art survey

Leitão

2009

Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence

702

349

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Recently, the MAST environment has been extended to simulate all the components of the holonic packing cell of the Center for Distributed Automation and Control (CDAC) at the University of Cambridge, U.K. This lab provides a physical testbed for experiments with the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology and the agile and intelligent agent-based manufacturing control [2]. These technologies are demonstrated on packing of the individually tailored Gillette gift boxes that can be filled by any combination of three out of four Gillette grooming items (gel, razor, deodorant and shaving foam).…”

Section: Mast Simulation Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rockwell automation agents for manufacturing

Mařı́k¹,

Vrba²,

Hall

et al. 2005

Proceedings of the Fourth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The paper provides an overview of the agent-based solutions developed by the Rockwell Automation company for the purposes of industrial control. Using agent-based manufacturing control, a higher degree of flexibility and reconfigurability of manufacturing solutions as well as higher robustness of the industrial systems can be achieved. Specific solutions connected with the proposed agent architecture, with implementation of the real-time control agents as well as with the information transfer among the SW agents and the real-time agents in a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) are presented. Attention is also paid to the simulation of both the agent-based manufacturing facilities and their control systems. A simulation environment MAST for material handling systems has been implemented in JADE. The opportunity to re-use directly the simulation software on the agent control level is one of the most important features of MAST.

show abstract

“…A real application of PROSA was conducted at Cambridge University using a packaging cell [18], where a collaboration was formed between order and resource holons to accommodate clients' demands. Order holons use negotiation techniques to ensure fast and reliable production and are also responsible for tracking production progress.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%