A Control Model for Prototyping Virtual Factory Simulator in Computer Integrated Manufacturing Environment

통합생산환경에서의 가상공장 시물레이터 개발을 위한 제어모형

Presented in this paper is a control model for developing virtual factory simulator, which is being operated under the distributed environment. The control model consists of production activity plan and information flows. To incorporate elements of the characteristics of the distributed control system, we suggested a collaboration model. This model is working under the client/server architecture, and also designed for cooperative-distributed shop control(CDSC) system in order to exploit several advantages of client/server architecture. Collaboration among each agent(or client) is done through negotiation and task sharing. Based on a contract net model, the CDSC system has three kinds of agents-order agent, resource agent, and communication forwarding agent. Each agent performs shop scheduling and control through negotiation on contract net. No node in CDSC system can have authority over other node. A bidding scheme is employed far negotiation between order agent and resource agents. The CDSC system can support re-negotiation among resource agents and an algorithm for re-negotiation is also developed. Experimental results are shown to advocate the effectiveness of the CDSC system for CIM environments.