Distributed Simulation Using Agents for the Internet of Things and the Factory of the Future

Abstract

The adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its related technologies has transformed the manufacturing industry and has significantly changed the traditional linear manufacturing supply chains into dynamic and interconnected systems. However, the lack of an approach to assess the economic feasibility and return uncertainties of an IoT system implementation, is blamed as the culprit for hindering its adoption rate. Using two distinctive case studies, this research investigates the use of distributed simulation of agent-based model (ABM) to address such gap in the literature. The first involves the economic feasibility of an IoT implementation in a very large retail warehouse facility, while the second case study proposes a framework able to generate and assess ideal or near-ideal manufacturing configurations and capabilities, and in establishing appropriate information messaging protocols between the various system components by using ABM in distributed simulation.