Affiliations: [a] Groupe de Recherche en Gestion de la Logistique, Faculté des Sciences de l'Administration, Université Laval, Ste-Foy, Québec, Canada, G1K 7P4 | [b] École des Hautes Études Commerciales, 5255, avenue Decelles, Montréal (Québec), Canada, H3T 1V6
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Abstract: To tackle the dynamic aspects of manufacturing systems, we approach the problem using a societal architecture paradigm. Our recent research work is strongly oriented toward exploring the use of intelligent objects (agents) as fundamental building blocks for the architecture of manufacturing management systems. Through our research, it has become clear that clever communication between agents is paramount to the success of such architecture and that flexible and well-structured management of knowledge is the key for performance improvement of manufacturing systems. In this article, we first focus on interagent communication in a scheduling system. In previous articles, we have used private memo-based communication as an efficient means to sustain specific requests for information as well as interagent commands. However, we have come to recognize that in scheduling systems information needs concerning the actual and planned status of the processors and orders is particularly critical and omnipresent. Therefore, we introduce in this article the concept of using a public interagent communication space to fulfill this information need. Specifically, we propose using a 3-D Gantt chart as the kernel of our scheduling scheme. The model we developed in Objectworks/Smalltalk-80 release 4 allows a selected subset of the Gantt chart to be viewed through a window that can move along the planning horizon. Operations shown on the view can be popped up to access related information. Several windows on the Gantt chart can be used simultaneously to highlight hot points in the scheduling horizon. Afterward, we present the communication structure combining memo-passing protocol and the public 3-D Gantt chart as a flexible platform for scheduling problems. In particular, the proposed model can serve as a rich environment for the development of distributed scheduling models.
