An agent-orientated design methodology for production control
An agent-orientated design methodology for production control
This thesis presents and evaluates the DACS methodology for designing agent-based systems for (non-real-time) production control. This methodology is appropriate and sufficiently prescriptive for a control engineer with only minimal training in agent concepts and with no prior experience in agent development to design an agent-based production control system. This was achieved by deriving the concepts of the methodology from an analysis of the application domain and by specifying all relevant agent-oriented design rules in terms of these concepts. In particular, the methodology consists of a method for analysing the decision making necessary to control a production system; a method for identifying appropriate production control agents, which also includes a rule specifying when to abandon an agent-oriented design approach; and a method for selecting interaction protocols to resolve any decision dependencies between the agents which allows to re-use existing interaction protocols. To evaluate the methodology, several case studies and reviews were performed. In particular, two case studies with students applying the methodology to a realistic test case and two reviews by engineers, who design control systems, were conducted. The feedback was unequivocally that the methodology is appropriate and sufficiently prescriptive for designing agent-based production control systems and that it could be applied in industrial projects in order to gain more experience with the methodology.
University of Southampton
Bussmann, Stefan Karl
568bc5e3-b5b0-4dbc-8a1c-a4a89e2243d0
2003
Bussmann, Stefan Karl
568bc5e3-b5b0-4dbc-8a1c-a4a89e2243d0
Bussmann, Stefan Karl
(2003)
An agent-orientated design methodology for production control.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
This thesis presents and evaluates the DACS methodology for designing agent-based systems for (non-real-time) production control. This methodology is appropriate and sufficiently prescriptive for a control engineer with only minimal training in agent concepts and with no prior experience in agent development to design an agent-based production control system. This was achieved by deriving the concepts of the methodology from an analysis of the application domain and by specifying all relevant agent-oriented design rules in terms of these concepts. In particular, the methodology consists of a method for analysing the decision making necessary to control a production system; a method for identifying appropriate production control agents, which also includes a rule specifying when to abandon an agent-oriented design approach; and a method for selecting interaction protocols to resolve any decision dependencies between the agents which allows to re-use existing interaction protocols. To evaluate the methodology, several case studies and reviews were performed. In particular, two case studies with students applying the methodology to a realistic test case and two reviews by engineers, who design control systems, were conducted. The feedback was unequivocally that the methodology is appropriate and sufficiently prescriptive for designing agent-based production control systems and that it could be applied in industrial projects in order to gain more experience with the methodology.
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Published date: 2003
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Local EPrints ID: 465162
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/465162
PURE UUID: fdada26c-f81d-4647-99c1-78ae8033c606
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Date deposited: 05 Jul 2022 00:26
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 19:59
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Author:
Stefan Karl Bussmann
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