An Architecture for Productive Collaboration Among Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

该项目旨在开发(1)一个富有成效的协作框架，该框架将实现空间分布的中小型企业（SME）的集成、协作和实时控制，(2)由车间级操作驱动的决策模型和工具，以及(3)一个分布式仿真虚拟环境，模拟中小企业之间的交互，并作为实验和验证所提议的系统架构和数学模型的测试平台。该项目将把拍卖模式扩展到分布式（相对于本地）制造资源环境中。一个主要的结果将是一个合作代理的架构，其中一组代理将代表一个希望在制造环境中与其他中小企业合作以实现共同利益的中小企业。新的研究内容包括开发车间的信息流模型和新的决策模型和工具。如果成功，本研究的结果将为中小企业建立高效的协作环境提供见解。将在本项目中开发的分布式信息流模型将提供可伸缩性和可重构性。

The project is aimed at developing (1) a productive collaboration framework that will enable integration, collaboration, and real-time control of spatially distributed small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), (2) decision making models and tools driven by shop floor level operations, and (3) a distributed simulation virtual environment that mimics interaction among SMEs and acts as a testbed for experimentation and validation of the proposed system architecture and mathematical models. The project will extend auction paradigms into a distributed (versus local) manufacturing resource environment. A primary outcome will be an architecture of cooperative agents, a set of which would represent an SME with a desire to collaborate with other SMEs for mutual gain within a manufacturing context. New research components include the development of an information flow model of a shop floor and new decision-making models and tools.If successful, the results of this research will provide insights for building productive collaboration environments for SMEs. The distributed information flow model that will be developed in this project will provide scalability and reconfigurability.