Managing the flow of intelligent parts

Abstract Advances in computer technology have brought the feasibility of intelligent system components to fuitation. Within the manufacturing environment, the regulation of parts' value-adding operations from entry into the system to completion as a finished product now can be individualized to depend on part specific information. The new CADENCE system, introduced in this research, manages the physical parts' operations and the information flow within manufacturing. Integration of both the physical flow dependencies and the information flow is provided by a negotiation procedure. CADENCE goes beyond previously proposed task bidding structures by utilizing distributed decision making in managing the flow of individual intelligent parts.