Intelligent hierarchy: A framework for distributed shop floor control

Heterarchical agent based control structures have been proposed as an alternative to conventional shop floor control. While robust in the face of stochastic behavior, current implementations of heterarchical control suffer from myopic decision making due to short planning horizons, isolation of decision makers, and a lack of conflict resolution. The Intelligent Hierarchy addresses many of the problems inherent in heterarchical systems. Where current agent based architectures focus on a single machine and short planning horizon, the Intelligent Hierarchy allows groups of machines to submit collective bids for sets of operations. Furthermore, the Intelligent hierarchy introduces conditional bids and negotiation between agents managing parts to resolve conflicts over resource contention.