The Research on Wasp Agent-based Resource Allocation for Distributed and Autonomous Manufacturing Entities

The network organization paradigm is gaining a growing importance in manufacturing as an instrument to help companies face the rapid challenges from market. In this paper, we view the node of network organization as autonomous manufacturing entities from different organization. We focus specially on the problem of resource allocation for the autonomous manufacturing entities to best satisfy order demands. We adopt a new approach which is influenced directly from computational model of how wasp colonies allocate tasks to meet the collective needs of the nest. firstly, our system models each entity in the network organization as a wasp agent and each task as a zone in wasp nest. Secondly, we propose a mechanism of resource allocation and design a method of threshold values updating considering an entity's capability. Finally, we construct XML-based information communication format between wasp agent and its entity.