Production Lines That Balance Themselves

本文主要研究制造系统中分散的工作协调规则。例如，工人可能从一个车站移动到另一个车站，每个人都遵循一个简单的规则，告诉下一步该做什么。对于适当设计的规则集，工作人员的全局协调可以从他们的独立活动中自发地发展。因此，生产线可以是自组织的：在没有管理层干预的情况下，即使在工人数量或执行任务所需时间的变化等扰动下，它也能不断地重新分配工作，以最大限度地提高产量。这种想法与不太灵活的生产方式形成对比，比如传统的装配线，在这种生产方式中，中央集权机构通过一次性将任务和工人分配到各个工位来分配工作。然后，所有工人都严格遵守这项任务。实验和结果验证将与工业实验室和制造设施合作进行。

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.