Integration of Multi-agent Controller and Scheduler for Multi-purpose and Multi-batch Plant

Abstract

Recently, there are dynamic changes in customer demands where product lifecycles became shorter and shorter. Although batch process has natural flexibility, however the addition of new products requires many modifications not only in the batch plant but also in the associated batch plant management systems like control, scheduling and monitoring systems. The loads of the change managements of these batch management systems are very heavy and it will be increased extremely according to the increase of number of different produces. Batch plant management system should be improved to catch up these rapid changes and operation challenges easily. Our proposed integration of multi-agent controller and scheduler system can reduce the loads of modification of the scheduling systems.