Applications of control engineering in industry 4.0: utilizing internet of things to design an agent based control architecture for smart material handling system

摘要

Theinfluence of global economy has led to changes in the conventional approaches formanufacturing companies. In this case, manufacturing companies has taken underconsideration several essential characteristics such as real-time reaction tochanges, quick and quality response in satisfying customer requests, in bothhardware equipment and software modules by which the production processes areimproved for next generation manufacturing systems. Nowadays, material handlingsystem for manufacturing purposes is the key component for any modernmanufacturing processes. Additionally, due to high variety of products andshorter response times in today’s manufacturing industry, the demand for smartmaterial handling system has increased. Therefore, to recover these demands,custom-built systems have to be implemented which requires individually createdcontrol software which deals with flow control, product routings, layout andproducts distribution. Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that is set toenhance manufacturing by improving output quality and workflow efficiency.Nowadays manufacturing industries are utilizing internet of things concept as anetwork that connects multiple sensors and devices through the internet. Thereare thousands of these sensors within a manufacturing environment, from thetemperature gauges to the individual components on the material handlingsystem, connecting data from these devices can improve business efficiency,innovation as well as strengthening security. However; if the data is notconnected to a single common platform talking the same language, these potentialgains are lost. The aim of this research is to develop an agent based feedbackcontrol system and implement it utilizing IoT to control the material handlingsystem in manufacturing industry.