The production of the future is flexible and individual. Within the frame of Industry 4.0, technologies are being developed that support this vision. Thereby, multi-agent-systems are technologies that play a central role. At the conference, by means of a mobile data center, the various agents and their interactions are made transparent. In the presented system, many jobs are processed on different machines, and an agent-based approach in production planning and optimization is taken.
In an auction-like process, prices for time slots on machines are traded. Software agents try to “buy in” the cheapest possible time slots on the required machines for the orders. At the same time “muting” and calculating on different networked computers. The “price development” on this “stock exchange” with machines and orders can be viewed at any time. Practically relevant parameters are also taken into account. These include the transport times of the orders to the machines as well as stochastic aspects: the failure of a machine requires an immediate new planning.
Ing. Mag. Dr. Georg Weichhart is senior researcher and head of the Flexible Production Systems team at PROFACTOR GmbH in Austria (www.profactor.at). He lectures at the Department of Business Informatics – Communications Engineering at the Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU; www.ce.jku.at), and at the University of Applied Science Upper Austria (www.fh-hagenberg.at). He chairs the IFAC Technical Committee 5.3 on Enterprise Integration and Networking (tc.ifac-control.org/5/3), and is Vice-Chair Industry of the IFIP Work Group 5.8: Enterprise Interoperability (www.ifip-ei.org).
He has studied at Lund University (SE), received his Master from Vienna University (AT) and his PhD from JKU Linz (AT). Besides academic positions, he worked as senior software engineer and project manager at private companies in AT, DE, UK. In addition to this, he has been participating as senior researcher and software architect in numerous European research projects. In 2013 he was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship. Dr. Weichhart served as Co-Chair for international conferences and workshops like CoopIS (Cooperative Information Systems) and OTM/IFIP/IFAC EI2N (Enterprise Integration, Interoperability and Networking; www.otmconferences.org). His current research interest focuses on interoperability for complex adaptive organizational systems using multi agent and multi actor based information systems.