Complex, large-scale production lines will soon get anew class of systems based on the world’s first agent-based production control system, currently in use on the Mercedes C-class assembly lines.
ProVis.Agent controls and monitors the line, not only providing visibility of the whole factory and any disruptions, but crucially also the resulting bottlenecks, the overall impact of any specific disruption – and required averting actions.
“The system works out what the worker in the control room needs to do in order to achieve the defined output target – for instance, by postponing a scheduled break, redeploying the workers on the production lines, or changing the sequence of the vehicles at short notice,” explains Dr.-Ing. Olaf Sauer, head of the control systems unit at the Fraunhofer Institute for Information and Data Processing in Karlsruhe, Germany, where ProVis.Agent was developed.
Conventional shopfloor-related software systems are not usually interlinked, which means that information has to be collected and interpreted. “A new generation of shopfloor-related IT systems [manufacturing execution systems] has become established to ensure that planning systems and control systems interact smoothly – and their components are interlinked by software agents or services,” he says.
The system was recently commissioned at the press shop in Bremen. “This is the first time we have ever been able to integrate information from different press shop IT systems in the control system,” says Sauer.
“There are cameras monitoring the scrap metal conveyers and the loading of wagons, and an operating data registration system monitors the presses and conveyers.
“The press shop uses automatically guided vehicles, a new inventory management system, and SAP for order management. Our integration platform combines all of these applications in a central control room for overarching operation and observation.”
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