SIMULATION PLATFORM FOR MULTI AGENT BASED MANUFACTURING CONTROL SYSTEM BASED ON THE HYBRID AGENT

Agent  based  distributed  manufacturing  control  and  scheduling  systems  are subsets  of  new manufacturing systems. Multi agent systems (MAS) not only drive design and engineering control solutions but also influence flexibility, agility, and re-configurability, which makes MASs a better centralized systems  than its  traditional  counterparts. However, implementation  of  all MASs in the 
real  factories  are  timely,  also  extremely  costly.  A  simulation  environment  that  would  allow independent  development  and  testing  of  the  services  and  business  processes  of  the  related manufacturing hardware is needed. This paper presents the design and implementation of a userfriendly simulation platform for multi agent based manufacturing control systems by considering the  shop  floor  level.  The  proposed  simulation  platform  can  simulate  the  software  level  of  the factory  by considering the  hardware level of the mentioned  factory. An example of the simulation platform is presented for a flexible manufacturing system, which is located in EMU CIM lab.