Adaptive Electronics Manufacturing Services Using Intelligent Agents

The need for adaptive operational management in manufacturing enterprises, whereby changes in the environment are sensed and acted upon rapidly, has been recognised as a key competency for a modern manufacturing organisation. However, enabling such capability demands new types of ICT. In this paper a multi-agent system is presented. The system has been designed and tested around the needs of an Electronics Manufacturing Services organisation designing and making complex electronics products for home appliance OEMs. A key feature of the system is that agent behaviors are driven by models encompassing sustainability related measures of performance. The system has been tested on actual manufacturing data and a series of scenarios involving unplanned events commonly experienced by the company. Numerical results demonstrate that such an approach is a viable ICT option for enabling adaptive manufacturing, rapidly responding to a series of commonly encountered unplanned events.