Modelling and simulation of auction-based shop-floor control using parallel computing

The high level of complexity and cost involved in the development, testing, and implementation of software for traditional, hierarchical shop-floor control of automated manufacturing systems has motivated considerable research in recent years on the distributed shop-floor control paradigm. In this paper, we describe a methodology for modeling and simulation of an auction-based shop-floor control scheme in a parallel and distributed computing environment using the Parallel Virtual Machine software library. Compared to traditional discrete-event simulation, this approach provides a more accurate means for modeling and evaluation of the shop-floor behavior under distributed control, and enables rapid prototyping of the actual control software. We discuss the challenges and highlight research opportunities associated with modeling and simulation of distributed shop-floor control systems using parallel and distributed computing.