Intelligent agents will take manufacturing control

The not too distant future of manufacturing management will be even more automated and flexible than it is now – on the back of intelligent software agents that will make every order, part, component, assembly and machine responsible for itself. Apparently, it’s not science fiction: according to Dr Duncan McFarlane, director of the Centre for Distributed Automation and Control (CDAC), part of the University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing, radical approaches are being trialled now – with intelligent agents communicating and negotiating with each others to optimise operations. Products find the most appropriate machines to make them, and reach them by the best route, quickly adapting to the break down of trucks or conveyors, or new machines coming online. First real world applications all seem to be in defence, but commercial blue chips are close behind, looking for ways to avoid the logjams, changes and configuration delays that bedevil conventional supply chains and manufacturing processes. The idea of components and machines being associated with intelligent agents – ‘holons’ – has been being researched since Professor Joseph Weizenbaum’s work in 1966 at MIT. In the commercial field, a component or whole car that is to be painted blue can be associated with a piece of software that knows this. The agent will negotiate with conveyors and paint shops to send the item to a paint shop that can do blue, by the shortest and most economic route. Should a conveyor break down, or the paint shop run out of blue paint, the component can negotiate an arrangement with a new paint shop and alternative conveyors, but will inform all the other components about the problem, according to a subscriber list.