Considering multi-evaluation perspectives in an agent-based FMS scheduling approach

For flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), scheduling approaches have been introduced to achieve optimized schedules while considering multiple optimization objectives. These objectives correspond mainly to the existing evaluation perspectives, namely, the system view and the customer view. The system view corresponds mainly to the maximization of resource utilization. The customer view corresponds to the minimization of jobs-makespans required for customer jobs to finish execution. These correspondent optimization objectives, in practice, are often conflicting and subject to certain constraints. In this paper, an agent-based scheduling approach for FMS is proposed. This approach takes into account both existing evaluation perspectives while generating FMS schedules. It seeks the maximization of the resource utilization and, simultaneously, the minimization of the involved jobs-makespans. Evaluation results recorded near-optimal schedules by the proposed scheduling process.