Can (John) Saygin (saygin@mst.edu, 573-341-6358), Scott E. Grasman, and Ming C. Leu

The project is aimed at developing (1) a productive collaboration framework that will enable integration, collaboration, and real-time control of spatially distributed small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), (2) decision making models and tools driven by shop floor level operations, and (3) a distributed simulation virtual environment that mimics interaction among SMEs and acts as a testbed for experimentation and validation of the proposed system architecture and mathematical models. The project will extend auction paradigms into a distributed (versus local) manufacturing resource environment. A primary outcome will be an architecture of cooperative agents, a set of which would represent an SME with a desire to collaborate with other SMEs for mutual gain within a manufacturing context. New research components include the development of an information flow model of a shop floor and new decision-making models and tools.

W eb link for this project: http://web.mst.edu/~saygin/nsf/

“Analysis of an Auction-based Distributed Scheduling Scheme for a Flexible Manufacturing System,�? T. Siwamogsatham and C. Saygin, International Journal of Production Research, Vol.42, No.3, pp.547-572, 2004.

Abstract: An auction-based algorithm for real-time scheduling of flexible manufacturing systems with alternate routings is presented. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is demonstrated by comparing it with various priority rules via simulation. The framework was built on a model developed by MacChiaroli and Riemma in 2002. The cost function of the original model was modified to incorporate ‘time’ as the primary criterion. The coefficients in the cost function were calibrated to improve the effectiveness of the approach. A software environment that included various Visual Basic_ modules and the simulation package Promodel were developed to implement the concept. The model was compared with typical priority rules on the basis of average tardiness, average lateness, average due date deviation, utilization balance, average throughput, average wait time and total cost. Analysis of the results showed that the auction-based approach outperformed the priority rules on most performance measures. The study concluded with a discussion on future research on auction-based models and on their application in the area of flexible manufacturing systems.