Goal-formation Process in Fractal Manufacturing Systems

Abstract

Decomposition of tasks in the ordinary manufacturing systems is usually based on the predefined goal of the system. To achieve the high-level-goals (e.g., factory goal or company goal), several sub-goals should be achieved in advance. However, goals can change along with the current status of the system and the external environmental situations. Thus, a manufacturing system should support the goal-formations which can be bearable these changes for efficient and effective operations. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a systematic methodology for the goal-formations in a manufacturing system. Especially, the formation and/or change of goals in real-time should be possible for distributed and dynamic systems including the fractal manufacturing system (FrMS). In this paper, a threefold methodology is proposed for the goal-formation process (GFP) in the FrMS; 1) a goalgenerating process (GGP) to make and propagate fuzzy goals, 2) a goal-harmonizing process (GHP) to eliminate or reduce conflicts and interferences of goals by using a mobile agent-based negotiation scheme, and 3) a goal-balancing process (GBP) to make a compromise between goals by using quantifiable indicators of the manufacturing system.