Branch-and-Bound Optimization of a Multiagent System for Flow Production using Model Checking
Stefan Edelkamp, Christoph Greulich · 2016
In this paper we propose the application of a model checker to evaluate a multiagent system that controls the industrial production of autonomous products. As the flow of material is asynchronous at each station, queuing effects arise as long as buffers provide waiting room. Besides validating the design of the system, the core objective of this work is to find plans that optimize the throughput of the system. Instead of mapping the multiagent system directly to the model checker, we model the production line as a set of communicating processes, with the movement of items modeled as communication channels. Experiments shows that the model checker is able to analyze the movements of autonomous products for the model, subject to the partial ordering of the product parts. It derives valid and optimized plans with several thousands of steps using constraint branch-and-bound.