Agent Oriented Smart Factory (AOSF): a MAS based framework for SMEs under Industry 4.0

Recently, the inception of a fourth industrial revolution, termed Industry 4.0, gave a boost to the concept of the smart factory, which offers the advanced features of enterprise integration, automation, seamless information exchange, intelligent self-organisation of components and decentralised decision making. In order to accomplish these promises, a mature amalgamation of allied technologies e.g. Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing, Big Data and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) is incumbent. Recent research explains that the idea of Industry 4.0 focuses mainly on large enterprise but, for its compatibility with Small to Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs), there is still much research to be done. This dissertation focuses on providing a comprehensive SC architecture for SMEs under the umbrella of Industry 4.0 to resolve the issue of compatibility, by presenting the MAS based Agent Oriented Smart Factory (AOSF) framework. This framework provides a general architecture for the whole value chain, incorporating concerns from both ends of a firm: Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). In order to provide a complete solution, this thesis also includes the associated framework of Agent Oriented Storage and Retrieval (AOSR) system to alleviate the persisting problems of SMEs in warehouse management. The classification and categorisation of constituent agents of this two-fold system, with their negotiation and communication strategies, are also discussed. Problem and Domain definitions for AOSF are extracted using a multi-agent extension of Hierarchical Task Networking (MA-HTN). Heuristics and experimental results for the implementation and validation of this system are also presented in comparison with existing standard strategies. The results reflect improvements in overall efficiency within SME-oriented warehouses. Some of the possible future work recommendations, scalability of this system and industry interest for this proposed strategy are also discussed.