Paulo Sousa, Carlos Ramos
Departamento de Engenharia Informática, Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP/IPP)
Rua São Tomé, s/n, 4200 Porto, Portugal
e-mail: {psousa, csr}@dei.isep.ipp.pt
José Neves
Departamento de Informática, Universidade do Minho
Largo do Paço, 4719 Braga Codex, Portugal
e-mail: jneves@di.uminho.pt
| Abstract | Article
(full text, only for subscribers) |
In the 80's, Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) concept was adopted as a solution to all the problems in manufacturing. However, it was soon realized that the evolving demands for manufacturing systems were not handled by CIM. New alternatives rise, and especially Agent-Based Manufacturing and Holonic Manufacturing Systems, for coping with today's manufacturing systems requirements. From an informational point of view (i.e. their database), manufacturing systems are very complex. Thus special attention is given to the representation and handling of incomplete information. From a developer's point of view, the ability to reuse code (i.e. functionality) across several entities greatly reduces developing efforts. Thus, inheritance of behaviours is proposed as a way to achieving code reuse. This paper presents a framework for the development of intelligent manufacturing systems, which allows the modelling of incomplete information and inheritance into each agent/holon. A prototype for an already described system for dynamic scheduling of manufacturing orders is also presented.
Paulo Sousa studied Computer Science at Instituto Politécnico do Porto (Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Portugal) - ISEP/IPP from 1990 through 1995 with a specialisation in Industrial Informatics. In 1998, he successfully concluded a post-graduation on "Distributed Systems, Computer Architectures and Computer Communications" at Universidade do Minho (University of Minho, Portugal), and started his PhD on Holonic Manufacturing Systems. Paulo Sousa worked for 3 years as an application developer for a Portuguese software house in the field of electronic archives, database retrievals and component building. In 1996 he became Assistant Professor at ISEP/IPP. His main research interests are Computer Graphics and Distributed Intelligent Systems. URL: http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/~psousa
Carlos Ramos is Coordinator Professor at the Institute of Engineering - Polytechnic of Porto (ISEP/IPP). He got his Ph.D from University of Porto in 1993. He is responsible for a research group involving 30 researchers and covering such areas as Planning & Scheduling, Knowledge-based Systems, Intelligent Agents and Knowledge Discovery. This group has published more than 150 papers in Scientific Journals and Conferences over the last 6 years. He is also Director of the Computer Integrated Manufacturing Centre of ISEP/IPP.
José Neves is Cathedratic Professor of Computer Science at the University of Minho, Portugal (UM). He got his Ph. D in Computer Science from Harriet Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland in 1984. His current research activities span the fields of Extended Logic Programming, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning systems and Multi-agent Systems, and he has more than 100 published papers in international journals, conferences, workshops and symposiums. He is the Director of the Research Group on Artificial Intelligence of UM.