A Collaborative Control System for Mass Customization Manufacturing

Abstract Mass Customization aims at producing customized products to meet individual customer's needs with mass production efficiency. The advent of this new mode of manufacturing introduces a different set of requirements on system control for manufacturing operations. The implications include the drastic increase of varieties, very small batch size, random arrival of orders, and wide spread of due dates. In addition, there are also factors such as similarity among tools, production plans and product designs. If properly utilized, that can help to reduce the complexities of the control systems. In order to develop a new type of control and coordination system to support mass customization, a heterogeneous coordination mechanism is developed. A price mechanism with the construct of intelligent agents in a market-like environment is investigated to fulfill the requirements.