An agent-based distributed manufacturing system

Abstract

Agent theories have shown their promising capability in solving distributed complex system ever since its development. In this paper, one multi-agent based distributed product design and manufacturing planning system is presented. The objective of the research is to develop a distributed collaborative design environment for supporting cooperation among the existing engineering functions. In the system, the functional agents for design , manufacturability evaluation , process planning and scheduling are efficiently integrated with a facilitator agent. This paper firstly gives an introduction to the system structure, and the definitions for each executive agent are then described and a prototype of the proposed is also included at the end part.