An agent-based approach to planning and controlling adaptable cell-oriented assembly systems

In today's production environment, change is an integral part of all aspects of production planning and control. Adaptable cell-oriented assembly systems can be equally efficient as conventional assembly lines. While, the former provides significantly more flexibility, contributing to the inevitable transition to more productive and variant-oriented assembly. This paper presents a novel concept for planning and controlling of modular and adaptable assembly systems. The approach utilizes an agent-based simulation model designed by embedding and orchestrating intelligence into assembly modules such as products, workstations, materials and tools. As a result, this leads to higher autonomy in communication among all system entities and allows more configuration possibilities and greater flexibility in the control of assembly flows and system performance, respectively.