Switching between levels of decision making in MAS organisation: application to flexible assembly cells

This paper presents a bi-level multiagent organisation where decision-making are taken in an optimal way at the upper level of the MAS, and in a reactive way, at the lower level. We proposed ORCA (Architecture for an Optimized and Reactive Control) approach to the management of flexible manufacturing systems. In this application, the upper level uses an Integer Linear Program (ILP) to allocate works to shuttles that have to build products; and the reactive scheduling model is based on potential fields. A simulation allows us to test our models, before to implement them on a real flexible assembly cell and validate the simulation results.