An agent-based collaborative assembly process planning system

In recent years, the competition among manufacturers to reduce the development time of new products has been quite fierce. At the same time, customers' needs have become relatively diverse. Considering these facts, it is essential for manufacturers to build an assembly line in the shortest time possible. Because an assembly line for varied and complex products involves numerous workstations, assembly operations and resources, it is extremely difficult for assembly process planners to develop an efficient assembly sequence and position. Thus, in order to overcome such complications, the best alternative is for a number of process planners to develop a process plan synchronously . This paper introduces a new process planning method for assembly lines based on a collaborative system. In it we propose an agent-based collaborative process planning system, and to verify it, we implement the system in an Internet environment and apply it to some practical case studies.