REU Report: Development of an Agent-Based Factory Shop Floor Simulation Tool

Abstract

Manufacturing systems of the future are expected to be agile and failure-tolerant. Current simulation tools are not well equipped to model these dynamically changing systems. Agent-based simulation represents an attractive alternative to traditional simulation techniques. This project aims to develop software for agent-based factory shop floor simulation. The current version of the factory simulation software is implemented in Java. Although the program lacks important features of a decision support tool, it provides a flexible agent-based framework for modeling and testing shop floor configurations.