Browsing by Author "Burawa, M."

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Agent based job scheduling for a vehicle engine reconditioning machine shop
    (Faculty of Engineering, Department of Industrial Engineering, Stellenbosch University, 2016) Nyanga, L.; Van der Merwe, A. F.; Burawa, M.; Matope, S.; Dewa, M. T.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Job scheduling at a machine shop is a multi-decision criteria problem whose skills are acquired after some years of experience. For Small, Medium to Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) with limited machinery the objective when scheduling jobs should not only focus on machine utilization but also on the increase of job through put. The paper presents an agent based job scheduling system for a vehicle engine reconditioning machine shop to assist decision makers in job scheduling. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was used to compute the relative weights of each decision criteria used for job scheduling considering the job priority. The value of the job, the number of operations to be performed, the engine type, the frequency of the customer and the company to customer relationship rating are used to prioritize the jobs. A Multi Agent System (MAS) comprising of the provider, job allocator and machine agents is developed using the Java Agent development framework (JADE) methodology and modelled using Unified Modelling Language (UML 2). The provider agent schedules all the jobs based on job weight and earliest due dates. The job allocator agent is responsible for making sure that all the scheduled jobs are allocated to all the machines after which they are registered as complete jobs and can leave the system.