A study on self-reconfiguration of a knowledgeable manufacturing system

Abstract

This paper deals with a new approach to the self-reconfiguration of the knowledgeable manufacturing system (KMS), which is based on knowledge meshes and agent meshes. To this end, new concepts of a knowledge mesh (K-M) and an agent mesh (A-M) are proposed as well as a new K-M and A-M based approach to knowledge representation for advanced manufacturing modes. A multiple set on the K-M is also formally defined as well as the mapping relationships between the multiple sets and the K-M. The union, intersection and minus operations on the multiple sets and the algorithms of K-M operations are proposed. In addition, preprocessing rules and the mapping between the multiple sets and the new K-M are explored in detail. On the basis of these, the relational database-based realizations of the K-M and its multiple sets are presented. Functional structure and realization of the self-reconfiguration subsystem of KMS are also presented. Finally, the self-reconfiguration method based on the K-M and A-M is exemplified by the self-reconfiguration of the management information system (MIS) software used in a vehicle body plant at Nanjing in China, which shows the method to be very effective.