Production Lines That Balance Themselves

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This research focuses on decentralized rules for coordinating work in a manufacturing system. For example, workers might move from station to station, each following a simple rule that tells what to do next. For properly designed rule sets, global coordination of the workers can evolve spontaneously from their independent activities. Thus the production line can be self- organizing: without management intervention it constantly reallocates work to maximize throughput, even under perturbations such as changes in the number of workers or in the time required to perform a task. This idea is in contradistinction to less flexible means of production, such as the classical assembly line, in which a centralized authority allocates work by making a one-time assignment of tasks and workers to stations. This assignment is then rigidly followed by all workers. Experiments and validation of results will be carried out in collaboration with industrial laboratories and manufacturing facilities.