Operating minimally intelligent agent-based manufacturing systems across the Average demand Interval–coefficient of variation (ADI-CV) demand state space

Abstract

Minimally Intelligent Agent-Based Manufacturing concerns the provision of agents with the minimal intelligence required to autonomously negotiate and broker work across machines and jobs. The minimal intelligence of agents can be updated in real-time and when coupled with technologies, such as Additive Manufacturing (AM), robotics, automated inventory, and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) affords highly flexible, re-configurable, resilient and responsive systems. The concept has become topical as changes to global supply chains are necessitating a shift to responsive and resilient on-demand manufacturing. However, understanding and characterising how these systems operate under various demand profiles is required to support operators operating these future systems. This paper reports a numerical study into the operating behaviour of minimally intelligent agent-based manufacturing systems operating across the Average Demand Interval and Coefficient of Variation (ADI-CV) demand state space. An established state space used in spare part supply chain research. The results show minimally intelligent manufacturing systems are stable across much of the ADI-CV demand space 85%, 63% and 76–84% for constant, triangular and lognormal manufacturing time distribution profiles respectively. The stability is largely independent of the combination of intelligence. Rather, the combination of intelligence impacts job Time-in-System and system response.