Three months to the end….the countdown for the conclusion of the Grace project has started!
The project partners have met at the Whirlpool premises in Naples for the first technical working session, whose main objective was to test the Grace Multi Agent System infrastructure in an off-line scenario. This means using real production data accessed through the Grace Global Knowledge Database and collected during the last 2 years of the Whirlpool washing machine production line.
Four full days of hard work allowed not only to fulfill the goal, but also to carry out some preliminary tests for the on-line demonstration of the MAS system itself and to define the final quality indexes.
The pictures below show some of the quality control stations already installed in the production line and that are collecting real production data.
The first two images refer to the Drum Geometry Control Station, placed along the Washing Unit Line.
The third image is a close up of the Vibration Control Station, showing the Vibrometer laser beam during the search for the optimal measurement position.
The last image shows the Adaptive Illumination System installed in one of the Vision Inspection Stations.
In the video below, showing an extract of the MAS running in the “off-line” scenario, it is possible to find all the agent families of the Grace Multi Agent System (MAS): when the production of a new item starts, a Product Agent is created and associated to the item itself; the Resource Agents (associated to each process and quality control stations), manage the execution of the operations, improving performances and signaling anomalies to the MAS; the Independent Meta Agent takes trace of all the products being produced and already finished, performs supervision and trend analysis.
Additional working sessions have been already planned in the next two months, in order to set up the final working prototype in June 2013, on time with the planning!
