Abstract
Balancing multiple conflicting objectives is a problem faced by all manufacturers, with on-time performance and cash position as two important examples. This study compares the effect of changing demand and priority of conflicting objectives within conventional, centralised, hierarchical systems and anarchic distributed systems, via agent-based simulation and modelling. The anarchic manufacturing system, based on free-market principles, delegates decision making authority and autonomy to the lowest possible level. Its proposed inherent flexibility and self-healing characteristics can accommodate complex scenarios. Decision-makers within the hierarchical system selected an appropriate dispatch rule to improve performance against objectives within its span of control. The anarchic system is shown to trade-off on-time and cash performance as respective objectives change priority, while the hierarchical systems do not. This warrants further investigation for distributed and anarchic systems as a system able to flexibly deal with complexity that also reacts to balance multiple objectives is highly desirable.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1453-1460 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Procedia Manufacturing |
| Volume | 38 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2019 |
| Event | 29th International Conference on Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing, FAIM 2019 - Limerick, Ireland Duration: 24 Jun 2019 → 28 Jun 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Keywords
- Distributed systems
- Multiple objectives
- Simulation