A behavior-based approach to scheduling in distributed manufacturing systems

This article proposes a behavior-based approach to scheduling a distributed autonomous manufacturing system. A behavior-based approach advances self-control of the autonomous entities as an alternative to purely reactive control through negotiations. Using this approach, the entities are given individual scheduling behaviors and interact with their environment through stimulus-response. This individual action brings about a collective emergent behavior of the system. We describe a heterarchical scheduling model based on this approach that incorporates adaptive mechanisms and local scheduling algorithms. The scheduling performance of the model for fairly complex production situations demonstrates a performance comparable to well-known heuristics. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.