Disturbance Measurement in Manufacturing Production Systems

This paper considers the problems of measuring and modelling production disturbances in discrete manufacturing operations, in conjunction with the design and operation of manufacturing control systems, capable of handling both internal and external production disturbances. The approach given here, is that being developed by the MASCADA Consortium [MASCADA, 1997] within a multiagent systems environment. This paper is organised as follows. Section 1 sets the problem in the context of approaches to this type of scheduling, section 2 formalises the concepts, a mathematical model of propagation is developed in 3, while the final section considers the implications for providing robustness in discrete-event scheduling and control solutions.