Production Lines That Balance Themselves

这项研究集中在制造系统中协调工作的分散规则。例如，员工可能会从一个站移动到另一个站，每个人都遵循一个简单的规则，告诉他们下一步该做什么。对于适当设计的规则集，工作人员的全局协调可以自发地从他们的独立活动演变而来。因此，生产线可以是自组织的：在没有管理干预的情况下，它不断地重新分配工作，以最大限度地提高吞吐量，即使在工人数量或执行任务所需时间发生变化等扰动下也是如此。这种想法与不太灵活的生产方式形成了鲜明的对比，例如经典的流水线，在传统的流水线上，中央当局通过将任务和工人一次性分配到工位来分配工作。然后，所有工人都严格遵守这一任务。将与工业实验室和制造设施合作进行实验和结果验证。

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.