Concurrent Decisions in Production Management

Abstract

In the computer-integrated manufacturing field, the problem of integrating production management decisions is often viewed as nothing but a problem of data sharing between activities. However, the coordination of decisions must take into account the management of conflicts arising between them. In this article, we propose an architecture in which the decision coordination and decision synchronization task (also called supervision task) is viewed as a software layer (called a local controller) over each decision-making subsystem. Each local controller is a knowledge-based reactive system, using a blackboard mechanism and able to dialogue with other local controllers. General behavior models for any local controller are defined, particularly cooperative behavior of local controllers with each other. A local controller shell has been developed from which all local controllers are instantiated.