Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Duanfeng Han, Qinghua Zhou, Jinghua Li, Jiaxuan Wang, Boxin Yang and
Miaomiao Sun
Abstract
Accuracy management of production materials plays an important role in offshore platform projects. To improve both
the efficiency and accuracy of material management in offshore platform projects, a novel material management system
characterized by the notion of a material information unit was proposed in light of a review of the industrial Internet of
Things and multi-agent technology. The material information unit is used to carry data on production materials and serve
as a basic information unit in the system. Furthermore, agents of different functions are employed to tackle assorted
tasks. Using this system, material information can be precisely recorded, tracked, and traced during the manufacture of
offshore platforms. In addition to this system, an algorithm targeting at multi-agent negotiation is designed. Finally, a pro-
totype system is developed to verify the feasibility and efficiency of this material management process.
Keywords
Offshore platform project, material management, material information unit, multi-agent system, agent collaboration
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open-access-at-sage).
2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
the manufacturing bill of material (M-BOM) from the of bulk and varied tasks. Indeed, combined with the
computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) system to MAS, the mobile agent is generally utilized to develop
achieve a more detailed record of system data. These intelligence production data systems, such as data ware-
additional types of BOM use different data processing housing,31 sensor networks,32,33 and production data
methods and formats for the same materials in the pro- collection.34 Thus, mobile agent technology is capable
cess of assembly, production, and logistics, and frag- of being applied to management processes dealing with
mented data sources, which adds an additional data a huge amount of OPP material information collected
conversion process for material information retrieval by sensors.
and restricts the effectiveness and efficiency of material
information tracking and tracing. Therefore, a unified
and standardized information unit that enables suffi- Industrial IoT
cient accuracy in terms of the trackability and traceabil- To obtain accurate material information, it is necessary
ity of production materials to meet information to implement an industrial IoT.35 This achieves direct
management requirements is required. In relation to communication between the materials and the enter-
material information management during OPP manu- prise’s network. Using such a network, material infor-
facturing, Li and Liu7 designed a new material manage- mation and the associated instructions can be traced
ment file called the bill of lots (BOL), which combines over time. An important element of the IoT is identifi-
diverse aspects of information with the BOM, and then cation tag technology.36 Tags are attached to the mate-
proposed the concept of a traceable entity unit (TEU) rial entity and data are transited directly through the
for material information management. However, the IoT, enabling the information to be processed more
detailed design and application of the TEU were not smoothly and accurately. Thanks to the development
presented. Even though the composition of material of identification tags and wireless technology, a series
codes and its relationship with manufacturing have of tags such as radio frequency identification
been widely researched8,9 in shipbuilding projects, tra- (RFID)37–40 and quick response (QR) codes40,41 have
ceability properties have not yet been considered. In been used in large-scale manufacturing processes dur-
this regard, the material coding system that is used in ing the last few decades. Due to the generic RFID,
the petrochemical industry10 is of great reference value. Kang and Lee42 proposed and developed a novel set of
traceability services for manufacturing management.
Agent technology Velandia et al.43 used RFID to trace and track material
information for the production of camshafts.
As a new branch of artificial intelligence, agent
Chongwatpol and Sharda44 presented an RFID-based
technology11 has been studied since the 1970s. The
traceability approach to improve production schedul-
MAS,12 a form of distributed artificial intelligence, has
ing performance.
been studied and applied in various areas. In the
IoT information tags need to be pasted or etched
domain of large-scale engineering, applications aided
onto the material surface. For the large steel structures
by the MAS have been developed for quality manage-
in OPPs, surface tags will be more likely to abrade or be
ment,13,14 product design,15,16 task scheduling and
lost during the manufacturing process. Moreover, steel
planning,17–19 supply chain systems,20,21 and workflow
structures possess a strong magnetic field, which is not
systems.22–24 There is a scarcity of research on the
conducive to the accurate transmission of RFID infor-
application of MAS technology to the development of
mation. As a result, the reading and writing of IoT tags
product manufacturing systems, such as manufacturing
are more likely to be wrong or become lost, therefore
resource management,25,26 control of manufacturing
the data recording system of the IoT should be avail-
systems,27 manufacturing task assignments,28 and man-
able for data analysis.
ufacturing system integration.29 The distribution and
collaboration features of the MAS make it suitable for
assisting complex multi-sector manufacturing systems. Discussion
In this sense, the majority of the existing system mod-
ules can be simulated by the agent or at least connected The following conclusions can be drawn after analyzing
with the MAS by the data interface agent (IA) to the situation regarding OPP material management:
improve OPP material management performance.
Mobile agent technology is another effective way to 1. Although the TEU was proposed to facilitate
complete distributed tasks and has attracted extensive material management during the OPP manufac-
interest.30 In agent-based systems, a mobile agent has turing process, it is only a conceptual model,
the capability of working regardless of the agent run- lacking coding rules and content specifications,
time environment deployed in enterprise nodes. From which is far from satisfactory for efficient OPP
this viewpoint, it seems ideally suited to the execution material information management.
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
2. The existing material management systems for material management process. Then, using industrial
OPPs do not support management of single- IoT tags and agent technology, an agent-based proto-
material records and the traceability and track- type framework is set up for OPP enterprises to manage
ability of all material data. These insufficiencies material information. In the following sections, we ela-
are magnified when a large amount of material borate on the standard MIU design for material man-
data need to be managed in OPP manufactur- agement, an analysis model and algorithm based on the
ing. Furthermore, information that is merely MIU, agent framework construction, and the agent
identified by a material tag without analysis is cooperation mechanism.
prone to data errors. Therefore, these systems
are not suitable for material information man-
agement for OPPs. Information processing mechanism in the
3. To effectively manage material data during the OPPMMS
construction of OPPs, it is necessary to connect
MIU
the material entity with the industrial IoT. In
spite of the fact that IoT tags enable communi- Standardization of information files should make mate-
cation with the material entity, the extremely rial management more efficient. In this section, the
harsh manufacturing conditions encountered in MIU is defined as a standard of the OPPMMS and an
constructing OPPs make it easy to lose tag analysis model is then developed.
information.
Structure of the MIU. In accordance with the BOL7 and
In response to the above analysis, this article pre-
the summary of the characteristics of material informa-
sents the following technical solution:
tion in the production process, the material information
1. Define the MIU. The MIU serves as the base unit to be included in the MIU for the OPP manufacturing
for the proposed system and is used to handle process is as follows: (1) material identification infor-
material information. In this article, the MIU is mation, (2) material logistics information, (3) material
defined for material management, and a reason- processing information, (4) material assembly informa-
able MIU data format is designed, ensuring that tion, and (5) other correlated and remark information.
the requirements for traceability and trackability Figure 2 shows the information that should be carried
of material management are satisfied. by the MIU.
2. Design the MIU analysis function for material According to the above analysis, material informa-
information management. Given the characteris- tion obtained during the OPP manufacturing process
tics of OPPs and the nature of the MIU, an can be divided into two parts: material attribute
MIU analytical model is presented for material information and material correlation information.
information management. Mobile agents that Thus, two categories of MIU are designed, namely,
are to be adopted in the OPPMMS are used to attribute-material information unit (a-MIU) and
rectify the MIU in a timely manner so as to correlation-material information unit (c-MIU). The
minimize the negative influences of poor pro- former represents the corresponding material attribute
duction conditions. The analysis function is
therefore proposed after considering features of
the MIU model and agent technology.
3. Develop an OPPMMS framework based on
agent technology. As a branch of computational
intelligence, the agent-based system has the
capacity to perform multiple distributed and
parallel tasks. Therefore, developing an agent-
based prototype of the OPPMMS framework is
believed to be advantageous. The capability to
process huge amounts of data will be improved,
and the ability to collect and analyze informa-
tion will be enhanced. In addition, other systems
and approaches are able to connect with the
OPPMMS framework through data-compatible
interfaces.
In this study, a standard data format for MIU is
designed after analyzing the requirements of the OPP Figure 2. Material information carried by the MIU.
Han et al. 5
information, while the latter represents the correlation c-MIU. Correlation refers to relationships between the
information. This arrangement enables the OPPMMS materials and its production activities. During the pro-
system to meet the traceability and trackability duction process, the materials are processed into fin-
demands of material information management systems. ished products through a series of processing steps. In
The MIU is formatted with data codes for use by each step, the materials are correlated with processing
OPP manufacturers. The MIU encoding rules consist of information. The c-MIU consists of material produc-
sequential a-MIU and c-MIU sub-rules, each of which tion, logistics, and other aspects that involve opera-
has a corresponding data code fragment. These encod- tional records for the materials. This c-MIU
ing rules are aligned with enterprise characteristics and information is acquired in a timely manner through
actual production requirements. The encoding rules of IoT sensors and formalized using specific rules. Thus,
a-MIU and c-MIU are discussed in the next section. the material’s status can be obtained and recorded. In
this sense, precise operational information relating to
materials recorded by the MIU in the various produc-
a-MIU. The a-MIU contains unique descriptions to tion stages can be retrieved. An example of an MIU
enable different materials to be distinguished in the explaining the encoding rules in relation to both
OPPMMS and is derived from a modification of assem- a-MIU and c-MIU is designed in Figure 4.
bly BOM information, reflecting the assembly structure The MIU is encoded with two code fragments. In
of a certain offshore platform. In fact, different materi- this way, the corresponding material records can be
als vary in terms of assembly levels in OPP manufactur- obtained accurately through the MIU encoding
ing processes. For example, raw materials, work in method, which achieves the traceability and trackabil-
progress (WIP) products, and finished products are ity necessary for material information management.
typically located in three separate assembly levels. The
layered encoding structure in the OPP assembly process MIU data model. From the above analysis, the MIU data
and the a-MIU encoding rules are separately exhibited model illustrating the relationship between a-MIU and
in Figures 3 and 4, respectively. c-MIU can be demonstrated via a tree structure. The
In the a-MIU code, the material assembly level is MIU data model is demonstrated in Figure 5.
defined by the material assembly sequence within the Three components are selected to illustrate this
BOM. Moreover, the material sequence number speci- model, and their a-MIUs are designated as F1, F2, and
fies the unique material in this level. To avoid duplicat- E1. In Figure 5(a), the assembly process of F1 and F2
ing material codes in different projects or different into E1 and the relationships between the transporta-
structures, the upper level assembly code and project tion and warehousing processes are recorded.
code need to be listed for each material, which ensures Correspondingly, the MIU including the middle part of
a unique a-MIU code and satisfies the identity coding the encoding rules and both sides of F1, F2, and E1 is
demands. Compared with identity coding using other manifested in Figure 5(b). In particular, the abbre-
encoding rules, this has the advantage that the assem- viated form of the c-MIU is expressed in brackets. The
bly sequence of the product is encoded by the a-MIU, a-MIU and c-MIU are stored in the form shown in
and on this basis, a related data management function Figure 5(c). Furthermore, Figure 5(d) demonstrates the
can be developed. data model after considering the relationship between
the a-MIU and c-MIU.
The encoding rules and data model used for the
MIU provide a data standard for processing the huge
amount of data emerging from the Intranets of OPP
enterprises. The production structure information and
construction procedure information in the BOM are
able to correspond effectively through the MIU, which
not only enables bidirectional searching but also pro-
vides fundamental knowledge for material information
analysis.
Figure 5. MIU data model: (a) original material information, (b) material information unit (MIU), (c) MIU data storage format, and
(d) data model of MIU.
documentation from the CAM system. If we set the rel- manufacturing process, the values of u are defined in
evant factor u for a pair of c-MIU and a-MIU, the three distinct situations as follows:
MIU-relevant model will be created in the form of a
matrix, as illustrated in Figure 6. 1. u = 0 denotes that the corresponding materials
Figure 6(a) manifests the data model of the MIU, c-MIU and a-MIU are not relevant. For
which illustrates the correspondence between a-MIU instance, in Figure 6(b), line 1, column 3,
and c-MIU. Figure 6(b) exhibits the value of relevant c-MIU(W1) is not relevant to a-MIU(F2), thus
factor u. Actually, u is an integer that refers to the the relevant factor u13 = 0.
recording frequency of the relational records of a-MIU 2. u = 1 means that the corresponding materials
and c-MIU shown in the database. In the OPP c-MIU and a-MIU are relevant. In Figure 6(b),
Han et al. 7
Figure 6. MIU-relevant model: (a) data model of MIU, (b) value of relevant factor u, and (c) relevant model of MIU.
Index Content
4. IA. The IA plays an important role in this sys- agent structure in an OPPMMS is developed in
tem, being used to connect the MAS with exter- Figure 12.
nal systems. Crucial information, such as the
BOM and OPP construction plan, is sent to the
knowledge library of other agents through the OPPMMS working mechanism
IA. Furthermore, the IA provides an interactive The OPPMMS uses centralized data storage, which is
channel for system users such as enterprise man- integrated with the enterprise database system, to inte-
agers, who can monitor system processes and grate with other management systems in an enterprise.
intervene as required. However, a lot of materials and complicated processes
5. RA. The function agents and the IA are con- are involved in OPP manufacturing processes, and a
nected to all the enterprise databases by the RA, large volume of MIU data are generated at different
which stores all the information on materials locations on the enterprise IoT. The calculation load
during the OPP manufacturing process. After involved in MIU analysis is relatively large and needs
receiving the MIU data from the EA, the RA to be performed by multiple agents. Therefore, a multi-
will classify and store them. Moreover, when agent cooperation mechanism for MIU analysis has
MIUs need to be analyzed, the RA generates been designed in line with the MAS architecture.
AAs and provides the runtime environment for
the AAs.
Main operational scope of the OPPMMS
The main operational scope of the OPPMMS is divided
Agent structure. In view of the belief–desire–intention
into two parts: MIU data formation and MIU data
(BDI) model, an agent comprises a collection of com-
analysis. MIU data formation involves the acquisition
ponents. Each collection contains a goal (intention), a
of material information from IoT sensors. MIU data
controller (desire), and some knowledge (belief) about
analysis involves the analysis of the MIU data and for-
its external environment.
warding the results to the corresponding EAs for fur-
Agents in an OPPMMS are divided into two cate-
ther processing.
gories: mobile agents and immobile agents. Immobile
agents are deployed on the production nodes or data
nodes in networks, execute the crucial tasks in an MIU data formation. As Figure 13 shows, the MIU data
OPPMMS, and provide the runtime environment for formation process involves the acquisition of material
mobile agents. Mobile agents include AAs, which are attributes and the correlation of material information
generated by immobile agents to analyze MIUs. The from the IoT sensors, which is then encoded into
Han et al. 11
Step Content
Step Content
MA: manager agent; MIU: material information unit; RA: resource agent; AA: analyzer agent; EA: encoder agent.
Step Content
1 The MA as the CO releases the CG that is the MIU analysis from (a0, c0) to (a1, c1) via the blackboard
communication type
2 Regarding the response of cooperation agents, several RAs decide whether to participate in task bidding
3 MA collects bid RAs
4 In OPPMMS, the set of evaluation criteria for bid RAs is proposed: C = (c1, c2, c3, c4), where
c1: MIU analysis capability of RA
c2: network response time of RA
c3: task load of RA
c4: reliability of RA
5 MA specifies two backup management agents as evaluation agent, to form a set {e1, e2}
6 MA establishes weighting P coefficients W for the evaluation criteria
W = (w1, w2, w3, w4), and 4i = 1 wi = 1
7 Set rij as the evaluation score of bid agent evaluated by evaluation agent ej, in line with evaluation criterion ci from
C in Step 3. For each bid agent, the first-evaluation matrix R is generated as follows
2 3
r11 r12
6 r21 r22 7
R=6 4 r31 r32 5
7
r41 r42
8 In accordance with W in StepP 6 and R in Step 7,Pthe negotiation evaluation matrix N is generated as follows
N = WR = (n1, n2), and n1 = 4i = 1 wi ri1 , n2 = 4i = 1 wi ri2
9 In view of the methods of maximum membership degree, for bid agent i, the final estimation FEi is proposed as
follows: FEi = max(n1, n2)
10 According to the final estimation FEi of the bid agent i from high to low, the CO selects RAs to form the CR, until
the sum of RAs analysis capacity is greater than the CG requirements
11 After the identification of CT, the CR will be executed to implement the CG. For MIU analysis task, the execution
process of each agent is described in Table 1
MA: manager agent; CO: cooperation organizer; CG: cooperation goal; MIU: material information unit; RA: resource agent; OPPMMS: offshore
platform project material management system; CR: cooperation result; CT: cooperation team.
collaboration mechanism should be proposed in light of solution. Therefore, the MAS-based cooperation
the evaluation regarding the working criteria of agents mechanism is designed as follows to complete the MIU
in OPPMMS, aiming to select the targeting agents to analysis autonomously and effectively. The cooperation
cooperatively make MIU analysis as well as avoid task model is designed as a multi-tuple
conflicts and resource waste. In this regard, fuzzy com-
prehensive evaluation method has the capacity to pro- Cooperation = (CO, CG, CT, CR)
vide robust and accurate evaluation corresponding to
multiple criteria, which can be adopted and applied in The cooperation organizer (CO) is an agent that
MAS to deal with task allocation problem while achieve proposes cooperation objectives and develops coopera-
a comparatively high efficiency.46 On top of these, to tion plans. In an OPPMMS, all the immobile agents
take advantage of the autonomy of MAS, task alloca- can be set as COs. Cooperation goals (CGs), which are
tion process in OPPMMS can be designed as a bidding presented by the COs, include cooperation tasks and
mechanism, guaranteeing an overall optimal and agile task performances. The cooperation team (CT) is set
Han et al. 13
with the a-MIU code F03G01. Hence, the related first row of the first, second, and fourth columns,
material records need to be traced. More precisely, respectively. Consequently, material with a-MIU
through the OPPMMS, all the MIUs with search code F03G01, F03G02, or F03G04 in any product
conditions such that the a-MIU code is F03G01 will needs to be located and checked to confirm whether
be retrieved. In Figure 16, this is represented as the operational errors have impacted on other
MIU: \MIU = F03G01-F1A150903. in the first materials.
row of the first column. In accordance with the
encoding rules displayed in Figure 4, the decoding
information is obtained as follows: Example of MIU data analysis
Here, production data from an OPP enterprise are used
The material with code F03G01, on date 03/09/15, was to support the MIU analysis process in our OPPMMS.
processed through a procedure in which the code of the The MIU data analysis procedure using cooperation
worker was F1 and the code of the process was A. mechanism parameters is as follows:
2. Material information tracking. Suppose that there 1. Obtain the MIU analysis tasks. In this task, the
are operational errors involving material with the c- MIU analysis interval is manifested in Figure 17
MIU code F1A150903. Thus, the material that has and includes 19,960 MIUs.
passed through this operation needs to be tracked. 2. The MA releases the task in the system.
This means that through the OPPMMS, all the 3. The RA learns about the MIU analysis task and
MIUs with search conditions such that the c-MIU decides whether to participate. There are four
code is F1A150903 will be retrieved. In Figure 16, RAs participating in bidding for this task, form-
this is represented by three MIUs: \MIU = ing a set of bid agents B: B = {b1, b2, b3, b4}.
F03G01-F1A150903., \MIU = F03G02-F1A150 4. The MA specifies two backup MAs as evalua-
903., and \ MIU = F03G04-F1A150903. in the tion agents {e1, e2}.
Han et al. 15
5. In accordance with enterprise expert guidance, can be summarized as working automation, informa-
the weighting factors for the evaluation criteria tion accuracy, and functional modularity.
set C, which is described in Step 4 in Table 4, Future work will focus on the improvement of the
are determined to be W = (0.40, 0.25, 0.25, OPPMMS and other integrated systems. Furthermore,
0.10). an advanced MIU encoding format, analysis and retrie-
6. In accordance with the evaluation procedure, val algorithms for MIU data, intelligent analysis of
which is explained in Steps 5–10 in Table 4, and larger volumes of MIUs and other OPP data, and opti-
the weighting coefficients for evaluation criteria mized cooperation mechanisms for multi-agents will be
W, the bid agents b1–b4 are evaluated. The eva- investigated.
luation process data are shown in Table 5.
7. According to the final estimation FEi and analy- Declaration of conflicting interests
sis capability of bid RAs, bid agents b1 and b4, The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
with a total of more than 20,000 MIU analysis respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
capabilities that satisfy the task requirements for article.
19,960 MIUs, are selected to execute the MIU
analysis. Funding
8. Set the analysis radius k = 1 to execute the anal- The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
ysis. Figure 17 shows the OPPMMS export of port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
abnormal MIU data after this MIU analysis. article: This article was financially supported by the National
The OPPMMS explains that it can automati- Natural Science Foundation of China (project no. 51679059).
cally analyze the MIUs in accordance with the
instructions.
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