We are delighted to announce that the DMF lab will be attending and presenting research at 16th International KES Conference on Agent & Multi-Agent Systems: Technologies & Applications. The conference brings together researchers and practitioners from across the world together to discuss and share knowledge on agent-based systems.
Papers to be presented are:
Queueless: Agent-Based Manufacturing for Workshop Production.
James Gopsill, Martins Obi, Lorenzo Giunta, and Mark Goudswaard
Workshops are vital to product development, supporting prototyping, research & development, bespoke and small-batch production, and education. They are composed of diverse manufacturing capability that needs to meet varied, rapid, diverse, and often random changes in demand. The diversity in both composition and demand continues to challenge the optimal processing of jobs leading to considerable delays and dissatisfaction with workshop services.
In this paper, we examine how a workshop can optimally utilise its manufacturing capability through an agent-based approach. We show that a relatively simple set of agent logics can provide considerable configurability and ability to optimise a workshop of twenty machines meeting a step-change in demand. Appropriate configuration can result in a 40% change in mean Time in System and 20% change in the number of jobs delayed.
Coping with diverse product demand through agent-led type transitions.
Martins Obi, Lorenzo Giunta, Kautsar Ramli, Chris Snider, Mark Goudswaard, Ben Hicks, and James Gopsill
Additive Manufacturing (AM) machines are a highly flexible manufacturing capability capable of producing a wide range of products. One feature that enables this is the ability to change materials in a relatively short time. For example, Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) printers can be quickly and easily re-configured to print PLA, ABS, Nylon, etc…
Facilities that therefore employ Additive Manufacturing (AM) machines have the underlying capability to be flexible and responsive to diverse product demand. However, methods need to be developed to assist these facilities in deciding whether to and when to transition machines from one type of production to another. In this paper, we explore how an agent-based approach to type transition can provide flexibility and responsiveness to manufacturing facilities. The modelling shows the responsiveness to the spike in demand at lower switch ratios of 0.2 and 0.4 and a return to the steady state, albeit with some penalty charge and the unwillingness of machines to return to their steady state at higher switch ratios from 0.6 to 0.8.
We look forward to seeing you there. If you are unable to make it and are interested in any of our papers then feel free to get in touch to learn more.