ABSTRACT
The manufacturing industry faces a number of challenges, some of which are as follows: traditional mass production is not able to adapt to the rapid production of personalized products and an aging global population has become more prominent. The customer-to-manufacture paradigm reflects the characteristics of customized production where a manufacturing system directly interacts with a customer to meet his/her personalized needs. The goal is to realize the rapid customization of personalized products. The new generation of intelligent manufacturing technology offers improved flexibility, transparency, resource utilization, and efficiency of manufacturing processes. Compared with mass production, production organization of customer-to-manufacture is more complex, quality control is more difficult, and energy consumption needs attention. The resource dynamic scheduling has become one of the most prominent characteristics. The concept of a smart factory aims at the rapid manufacturing of a variety of products in small batches. Since the product types may change dynamically, system resources need to be dynamically reorganized. A multi-agent system is introduced to negotiate resource scheduling and reconfiguration. What’s more, other key technologies including Industrial Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and Digital Twin will also be deeply involved to support flexible customization manufacturing.
