Analyzing an agent-based architecture for self-organizing material handling systems using the unified modeling language

Abstract

Consulta en la Biblioteca ETSI Industriales (Riunet)

[EN] Multiagent-based architectures for manufacturing systems have been researched in recent years as the base for building plug and produce systems which are highly flexible. Despite the recent advances in the area they are still not being adopted by industry. Several scientific papers have pointed the lack of method for validation and explaining their behavior as one of the reasons for the small usage in industry. In this context this Thesis uses the Unified Modeling Language to analyze two versions of an agent-based architecture for manufacturing systems. Both architectures target mainly dynamic product routing in conveyor-based systems and therefore include a set of agent interactions that are designed to promote the information exchange required to devise different routes in runtime when disturbances occur. This work focuses on analysis the main interaction between the agents to understand if the architecture may induce by design scalability issues.