This work presents the research about the application of Genetic Algorithms to a scheduling multi-agent system on a textile manufacturing industry.
Manufacturing industries competitiveness greatly depends on their ability to plan and schedule their processes in the most efficient way, as it impacts on production cost and time. Assigning jobs to scarce resources is not an easy to resolve task, mainly in the complex industrial processes context. This research’s objective is to assess the applicability of Genetic Algorithms – a technique with an important development in the last years – to a multiagent production scheduling system aiming to obtain higher performance levels.
The paper first introduces the state of the art about the stated problem and the currently applied technologies. Industrial manufacturing systems, agents technologies, scheduling techniques and the current scheduling platform used as a basis, are described, as well as with the Genetic Algorithms technique. Finally, the proposed solution and its simulation are described, and conclusions are derived from them.
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