A SELF-ORGANIZING MODEL FOR SCHEDULING DISTRIBUTED AUTONOMOUS MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

This paper proposes an approach to scheduling distributed autonomous m anufacturing entities founded on the principles of self-organization. In this approach, called the behavior-based approach, the individual e ntities are endowed with adaptable scheduling behaviors and the abilit y to cooperate with each other. The individual adaptation helps a unit to deal with schedule perturbations from the environment. More import ant, it indirectly contributes to the community-level performance, suc h as to produce quality schedules jointly, reduce uncontrollable pertu rbations, and maintain stable allocations. This model has been tested for a variety of production situations and the results are promising. In this paper, we describe the underlying concepts of the model and ou tline the results of the experiments.