Cluster Comput
DOI 10.1007/s10586-017-0852-1
A big data enabled load-balancing control for smart
manufacturing of Industry 4.0
Di Li1 Hao Tang1 Shiyong Wang1 Chengliang Liu2
Received: 26 October 2016 / Revised: 22 February 2017 / Accepted: 3 April 2017
Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017
Abstract The concept of Industry 4.0 that covers the top-
ics of Internet of Things, cyber-physical system, and smart
manufacturing, is a result of increasing demand of mass cus-
tomized manufacturing. In this paper, a smart manufacturing
framework of Industry 4.0 is presented. In the proposed
framework, the shop-floor entities (machines, conveyers,
etc.), the smart products and the cloud can communicate
and negotiate interactively through networks. The shop-floor
entities can be considered as agents based on the theory of
multi-agent system. These agents implement dynamic recon-
figuration in a collaborative manner to achieve agility and
flexibility. However, without global coordination, problems
such as load-unbalance and inefficiency may occur due to
different abilities and performances of agents. Therefore,
the intelligent evaluation and control algorithms are pro-
posed to reduce the load-unbalance with the assistance of
big data feedback. The experimental results indicate that the
presented algorithms can easily be deployed in smart man-
ufacturing system and can improve both load-balance and
efficiency.
Keywords Smart manufacturing Load-balancing
Multi-agent system Hybrid production Cyber-physical
system
B Shiyong Wang
mesywang@scut.edu.cn
1 School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, South
China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
2 School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, Shanghai, China
1 Introduction
Along with the rapid development of global economy, the
organization structure of industrial production has encoun-
tered a tremendous shift over the past few years [1]. Sellers
market that simply focuses on expanding the production
capacity without considering the variations in customer needs
has not been regarded as mainstream. In contrast, as market
saturation increases, the market converts into buyers market
and stimulates the transformation of production manufac-
turing towards product customization called lean production
(LP). The LP has been widely acclaimed because it helps in
eliminating waste and reducing cycles in the product supply
chain. Currently, international markets have created a high
level of competition that requires high agility, rapid changes
in the customized production style and fast reconfiguration
of manufacturing systems [2]. The emerging industrial rev-
olution (Industry 4.0) triggered by information technology
concentrates on the establishment of intelligent products and
production processes [3]. The realization of Industry 4.0 will
be possible with the increasing implementations of Internet of
Things (IoT) and cyber-physical system (CPS) [4]. It allows
communication between humans, machines and products by
large networks and will become a critically competitive edge
for markets [5]. Based on IoT and CPS [6,7], several dis-
ruptive advances as well as the cross-domain fertilization
of concepts and the amalgamation of IT-driven approaches
in the traditional industrial automation systems have been
proposed, such as collaborative systems [8], wireless sen-
sor networks (WSN) [9,10], Service-Oriented Architectures
(SOA), networked cooperating embedded devices and sys-
tems, and big data.
Distributed systems can manage high complexities and
form the first step for the CPS with self-organizing and
self-controlling features [11]. The research results in the
123

distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) field have indicated
that the intelligent manufacturing system equipped with
agent technology is the most promising development trend.
Multi-agent system (MAS) provides the modeling and imple-
mentation of distributed-intelligent manufacturing process
with a theoretical basis [12,13], in which each department in
the manufacturing system act as a smart agent and can nego-
tiate with others in order to obtain agility and flexibility in
dynamic reconfiguration [14]. Most agent-based manufactur-
ing process systems apply negotiation mechanisms to assign
tasks. The most common negotiation mechanism is the Con-
tract Net Protocol (CNP) [1521]. However, the proposed
MAS structure will not be able to handle the consequences
of local convergence [22], such as the load-unbalancing of
workshop equipment, due to the performance differences of
various manufacturing agents and the absence of the global
coordination. The load-balancing [23] control can be classi-
fied into two groups, centralized control (CC) and distributed
control (DC). Both groups have some pros and cons, so a
better load-balancing performance can be obtained by their
combination. The DC, CC and their variant versions in MAS
have been widely studied but most of these studies have
focused on Internet and electric management field [2428]
instead of the manufacturing systems discussed above.
This article focuses on the key algorithms that can cope
with the MAS complexities in smart manufacturing in
accordance to a proposed smart factory structure that con-
sists of intelligent agents with cloud-assistant feedback and
coordination [29]. The contributions of this paper can be
summarized in following two parts: First, two intelligent
evaluation algorithms are proposed for machining agents
to choose the single target and for conveying agents to
build a target chain. Second, another algorithm is presented
to prevent the load-unbalancing by introducing the cloud-
assistant feedback mechanism. At the end of this article, the
proposed algorithms are verified and validated using a proof-
of-concept experiment of candy packing.
The remainder of the article is organized as follows:
Sect. 2 introduces the proposed smart factory structure,
presents the two intelligent evaluation methods to enable
the proposed negotiation mechanism and elaborates how the
cloud-assistant coordinates the negotiation to prevent the
load-unbalancing of agents; Sect. 3 describes the experiment
and analyses the main experimental results; In the end, Sect.
4 concludes the work and outlines the future directions.
2 Framework
The structure of smart factory presented in [28] can be con-
sidered as a dual closed-loop system as illustrated in Fig. 1.
The top loop consists of cloud-assistant layer and user layer,
while the bottom loop consists of bottom resource interac-
123
Cluster Comput
tion layer and cloud-assistant layer. The customers in user
layer can send demand of products to the cloud. The cloud-
assistant layer as the intermediate layer collects the data from
the bottom resource layer and the user layer and then per-
forms the analysis on big data for feedback to bottom devices
or management monitoring. In addition, the system param-
eters can be adjusted according to the system performance.
The bottom resource interaction layer containing the net-
work and the devices as the basis of CPS, enables the smart
objects to cooperate with each other in order to complete the
tasks.
Smart shop-floor entities compete and cooperate in the
decentralized manufacturing environment with self-organized
ability and hence contribute to complementary advantages to
achieve the flexibility for processing the multi-type products.
In this sense, smart shop-floor entities can be modeled as
MAS. The workshop appliances can be classified into three
types of smart agents based on the difference of functions and
responsibilities. The first type is the machining agent (MA)
that performs machining and storing the operations, such
as processing equipment, testing equipment and automated
storage devices. The second type is the conveying agent (CA)
that can move the smart products from current location to
the destination, such as the conveyor belts, the loading and
unloading manipulators and the automated guided vehicles
(AGVs). The last type is the product gent (PA) that needs
processing and is equipped with RFID tags or micro con-
trollers.
The workflow of self-organized manufacturing system
with cloud-assistant is shown in Fig. 2. Once the cloud
receives the order data, the PA will retrieve the date from
the cloud and write it to the RFID tag. The PA nego-
tiates with the MA in accordance to the task and then
chooses the most appropriate MA. After that, the PA will
negotiate with the CA and will build a route chain to
move the PA from its current location to the location
of the target MA. Finally, the PA arrives at the destina-
tion and completes the first process. In case of subse-
quent operation, the PA begins a new negotiation to finish
it.
The negotiation mechanism is based on CNP. As shown
in Fig. 3, the PA acts as a manager to publish the tasks
and the MA/CA act as contractors to compete for the tasks.
It is worth mentioning that in the actual scenario of smart
factory, the PA may store the information on a RFID tag
to communicate with other agents by reading/writing the
RFID tag instead of having a smart chip. In this case,
the PA is unable to launch a negotiation by itself, instead
that a negotiation is initiated vicariously by the MA/CA
on behalf of PA. Once the PA publishes the task, all the
MA will obtain the task and will compare the calculated
perceptibility with the threshold in terms of the local knowl-
edge base in order to decide whether or not to bid for the
Cluster Comput

Fig. 1 The structure of the

smart factory
User layer

Top loop Network

Flume MySQL
server server
Sqoop
Hive
flume (SQL) Hive
YARN HBase Sqoop
flume (Distributed (NoSQL)
computing
architecture) Tomcat
Servlet
HDFS
(Distributed file system)
Interface
Interface Cloud-assistant
layer
Bottom loop Network

Machining agent

Product agent
Conveying agent

Bottom resource
interaction layer

task. The PA uses some judgement rules to calculate the
performance indicators and uses the results to award or
reject the contractors. The successful bidder will execute the
task.
inferiority of the agents. Thus, five mental parameters,
including Perceptibility (Per), Reliance (Rel), Activity (Act),
Friendship (Fri), and Capability (Cap) are employed. These
parameters range from 0 to 100 with ranges of weight values
from 0 to 1. The task agent (TA) represents MA or CA.

3 Intelligent evaluation algorithms for
self-organized negotiation
According to the process mentioned in Sect. 2, the evaluation
function serves as a criterion to evaluate the superiority-
3.1 Evaluation algorithm for determining a target MA
The perceptibility of the TA is denoted by Per. Higher value
of Per means easier perceptivity of the TA regarding the pub-
lication. The Per is divided into two parts. The one is Idle that

123
 Cluster Comput

contarctor:PA contractee:MA/CA
Start
Publish(ID,RI)
User layer Place order
Refuce Yes
Data assist Process order data
layer Bid(ID,RI) Per> LP

No
Negotiate to choose a target
MA No Reject(ID,RI)
t
Ti is the max?
No
Successful? Award(ID,RI)
Yes
Yes
Execute the task
Negotiate to build a CA route
chain

Bottom resource
Successful? No Fig. 3 The process of the intelligent negotiation mechanism
interaction layer
Yes When penalty >> award , the TA should be given a serious
Send the PA to the target MA punishment for failing the task in order to make its reliability
and process it explicit.
Act represents the ratio between the sum of the TA task
bidding and a TA bidding count. Thus, Act satisfies:
Another Yes
process?
Nt
No Act = n i 100, (3)
End k=1 Nkt


Fig. 2 Workflow of the self-organized manufacturing system with where, Nit is tai bidding count for task t, and nk=1 Nkt is the
cloud-assistant sum of the TA bidding. The equation multiplies 100 to unify
the dimensions.
represents the duty cycle of the TA, the other is Res that refers Fri shows the success rate of negotiation and satisfies:
to the remainder resource, such as the surplus of batteries or
materials in storage. Therefore, the relationship among three Nitj
parameters is as follows: Fri = 100, (4)
N tj

Per = W R Res + W I I dle, (1)

where, W R and W I are the weights of Res and Idle, respec-
tively. In addition, W R + W I = 1.
Rel is the main indicator that shows the degree of the PA
entrusting the TA. When Rel of the TA is large, the PA will
more likely commission the task. Generally, the initial value
of Rel is 30 that increases award after the TA completes the
task. However, Rel decreases penalty as a punishment of the
failed task. Thus, Rel satisfies:
where, Nitj is the count of the tai bidding for task t tota j .
Cap represents the finished effect of the TA executing
taskt and reveals the performance of the TA, such as the
machining precision of the MA and the transport speed of the
CA. Furthermore, it is a constant value defined by managers.
There is a functional relationship among the five men-
tal indicators. A comprehensive evaluation indicator can be
introduced, and the mental expectation function is formulated
in accordance to Eqs. (14) as follows:

Rel = min {100, Rel + award} Iit = W p Per + Wr Rel + Wa Act

 (2)
Rel = max 0, Rel penalty . + W f Fri + Wc Cap, (5)

123
Cluster Comput

where, Iit is the comprehensive mental expectation that tai cai

bids for task t. W p ,Wr ,Wa , W f and Wc are weights of the
five indicators, in addition, W p + Wr + Wa + W f + Wc = 1.
A basic approach is followed to select these weights,
which means that a group of weights correspond to a manu-
facturing strategy. There are several strategies in the TAs ca j cav
knowledge base. A strategy should be determined before cak mal cau
customers place the orders, thus the corresponding weights Accessible set
are selected at this time. Both Wa and W f are set constants
because they do not have significant influence on the strategy. Fig. 4 The accessible set of cai
The remaining weights abide by the following rules: when the
demand for the manufacturing speed increases, W p should fore, S( ) is considered as the performance indicator of
become higher to enhance the perceptibility weight in order experimental results.
to make the TA easily perceive tasks and increase the chance On this basis, the cloud-assistant mechanism is able to pro-
for carrying out the task. Wr and Wc should be lowered to vide a leader to conduct this group activity in order to develop
decrease the proportion of reliance and capability for choos- in an optimum direction. Thus, the intervention parameter
ing the TA in a larger range. Inversely, when the demand I nti and its weight WI that shows the level of cloud-assistant
of the manufacturing quality increases, W p should become intervention for device i are introduced. Hence, the relation
lower and both Wr and Wc should increase to concentrate on for evaluating TA satisfies in terms of Eq. (5):
the TA with high reliance and capability of selecting tasks,
Tit = (1 WI ) Iit + WI I nti , (8)
so that it can improve the products reliability.
The relationship proves that above mentioned mental where, Tit is the expectation of tai bidding for task t.
indicators only represent their own reaction to external envi- Multiple agents have different intervention parameters in
ronment based on the knowledge base. In other words, it group activities. Thus, the parameter I nti should be expanded
is merely an individual behavior in the group and the intel- to the intervention vector I nt = [I nt1 , , I ntn ]T . The
ligence of individual behavior can hardly lead the system expectation vector T t can be obtained using Eq. (8) as fol-
performance to be a global optimum. In the negotiation, the lows:
system considers the performance of the agent as a mea- t
I1 I nt1t
suring tool to allocate the tasks. Therefore, the agents with It t
T t = (1 WI ) 2 + W I nt2
better performances will always win the bidding in compe- I
tition with other agents that have poor performance. This Int I nt t
leads to the phenomenon that the workloads of agents with n (9)
(1 WI ) I1 + WI I nt1
t
greater performance are much heavier than that with poor (1 WI ) I t + WI I nt2
performance. =
2 ,

The load ratio of device i can be obtained as follows: (1 WI ) In + WI I ntn
t

Hi Equation (9) indicates that Tit depends on Iit and the degree
i = 100%, (6) of the cloud intervention in group activities. Moreover, I nti
Cai
and WI are both proportional to the level of the intervention.
where, Cai represents the available hours of i and Hi is the If the load-unbalancing of the TA occurs in the system, the
used hours. cloud will consider the unbalancing degree to adjust the inter-
In this paper, the variance of load ratios S( ) is used to vention strategy. At this moment, WI will become larger with
describe the degree of devices load-balancing and it satisfies: increasing load-unbalancing. In general, I nti is preset to be 1
but the manager can dynamically adjust its value according
to the current performance of device i. It can be seen that

n
= 1
n i Eq. (9) considers all relevant factors about manufacturing to
i=1 (7) select the target MA. This ensures that the target MA is a
n
S( ) = 1
n1 (i )2 , global optimum.
i=1

3.2 Evaluation algorithm for building a CA route chain

where, shows the overall utilization ratio of devices. S( )
denotes the difference of various devices utilization. In other Once the target MA is determined, the PA is required to move
word, a smaller difference produces a smaller S( ). There- from the current location to the target location in order to

123
 Cluster Comput

mai Algorithm 1: building a target route chain

Step 1 1 Variables definition
caa cab cac Cs: Storing the sum of CA;
Step 2 Te: Storing the expiration time of waiting for CAs
Response;
cad cae ca f ca g cah cai
Stp: Storing the step of building route;
Step n-1
Rc: Storing the count of existing route;
ca j cak ma j cal cam
R[N][Cs]: Storing the chosen routes;
Step n
ID[N]: Temporarily storing the response CAs ID;
can cao ma j ca p caq car ma j Ic[N]: Temporarily storing the number of existing
route index;
Fig. 5 The process of building route chains
2 Begin
3 Obtain the target TA of the task and save it to
process the PA. Unlike selecting the target MA, constructing 4 R[0][0];
a CA route chain is the consequence of assembling the CA. 5 Publish R[0][0] as first target TA to every CA;
Besides, every knowledge base of the CA has to possess 6 for Stp = Cs - 1 : 0
the spatial relationship
 between other TAs and itself. The 7 for i = Rc - 1 : 0
accessible set cai : ma j , , mak , ca j , , cak indicates 8 Wait Te for response of bid CA;
that the PA in the location of cai can be sent to the location of Compute the number of response CA and
the TA in the set, as shown in Fig. 4. Since cai only possesses 9 save it to the variable Rec;
its own accessible set rather than all, several negotiations of Compute the number of CA route index
the CA are required to construct the route chain from mai 10 and save it to the array variable Ir[Rec];
to ma j . Every negotiation involves a sponsor and multiple 11 for j = Rec - 1: 0
receivers, and follows some rules. In the negotiation, mai as 12 Ic[Ir[j]] = Ic[Ir[j]] + 1;
a sponsor, inquiries all the CA whether their accessible set 13 if Ic[Ir[j]] > 1
contain cat (the negotiation target). If the accessible set of a 14 Rc = Rc + 1;
CA contains cat , it will immediately respond to mai . Then 15 Copy R[Ic[Ir[j]]] to R[Rc];
mai records the CA, and regards this CA as a new cat to start 16 Ic[Ir[j]] = Ic[Ir[j]] 1;
the next negotiation. 17 R[Rc][Stp + 1] = ID[j];
On this basis, an algorithm is proposed to construct the 18 otherwise
route chain and is named as Algorithm 1. Developing the 19 R[Ir[j]][Stp + 1] = ID[j];
route chain begins with receiving the information sent by 20 endif
the contractees. The contractor selects the CA as the next if ID[j] == R[0][0] or ID[j] == any
target that has the current target TA in its accessible set. 21 existing ID in R[Ir[j]]
Then the process is repeated to construct the chain. If a 22 break;
branch occurs, then the old chain is copied to generate a 23 otherwise
new chain. The process is repeated until the destination is Publish ID[j] as the next target TA
found. 24 to every CA;
According to the algorithm, a path graph of the multi- 25 endif
way tree from mai to ma j can be obtained as shown in 26 endfor
27 endfor
Fig. 5. There are several routes and the TAs quantities of
all routes are not necessarily the same. Thus, the essence of 28 endfor
end
constructing the route chain is to synthetically evaluate the
performance of each chain. The evaluation equation based
Using Eq. (10) to derive the following equation:
on Eqs. (8) and (9) is:
t ++I t
Ikt + + I tj I1k
Wchain 1 (N1 )
1j
t
t
Tchain = Wchain i (Ni ) , (10) Tchain N1

1
i Ni Tt I2k ++I2t j
t
t
= chain 2 = Wchain 2 (N2 )
,
Tchain


N2

t
where, Ni is the quantity of the TA in chain i , Tchain is t
Tchain t ++I t
Ink
Wchain n (Nn )
i n nj
the evaluation expectation of chain i and Wchain i (Ni ) is the Nn
weight equation with Ni as the variable in chain i . (11)

123
Cluster Comput

I t ++I t severe intervention WI = 0.75 and complete intervention

where, k Ni j is the weighted mean to reflect the average
level of evaluations.
4 Cloud-assisted load-balancing control
According to Eqs. (6) and (7), i is proportional to H . Hence,
the cloud-assistant intervention can indirectly change S( )
by adjusting H . With functional load-balancing control, the
originally high H of device becomes lower and the origi-
nally low H of other device changes to high. Although the
is invariant, the multiple i will be closer. Therefore, S( )
becomes lower and load-balancing returns.
On the foundation of above mentioned evaluation algo-
rithms, an intervention strategy for preventing the load-
unbalancing is proposed and is shown in Fig. 6: WI is divided
into four levels that are none intervention WI = 0, mild
intervention WI = 0.25, moderate intervention WI = 0.5,
Start
Query the current load ratio
No 1
< Ll ?
S ( )
WI = 1. Once the overall workload performance is lower
than L l = S()1
t
(L l is the specified threshold of the work-
load performance; S( )t is the threshold of the normal degree
for load ratio), the cloud begins to intervene. The interven-
tion class turns to mild-intervention and I nti is generated by
the cloud to adjust Eqs. (811). After a period of Te , the load-
balancing is assessed to decide whether return to a normal
range or not. If so, the intervention will stop. Otherwise, the
intervention class will turn to higher class, and above pro-
cess is repeated. If the intervention class has already turned
to the highest class but the load of agents is still unbalanced,
it implies that the TA may have encountered some problems.
The intervention should stop and this situation needs to be
sent back to the cloud.
5 Experiment
An experiment is designed by using several workshop appli-
ances and network devices in order to verify the proposed
framework with respect to its associated dynamic negotia-
tion mechanism and load-unbalancing prevention strategies.
Five servers are used as cloud to collect and analyze the
field data. A group of machines (five robots as the MAs, five
PLC controlled conveyors as the CAs) and embed devices
are interconnected with cloud through Ethernet links. The
objects are shown in Fig. 7.

Yes 5.1 Experiment layout

WI upgrades
As an example of candy-picking, assume that nine types of
mixed candies need to be packaged in production line and the
Delay Te and query the current quantities of these nine types are {200, 100, 100, 100, 400,
load ratio 200, 100, 100, 400}. In addition, the available hours of all
machines are 24 hours. Five robots can pick candies of same
type as {A, B, C, D, E} with work time of 6, 14, 13, 11 and 16
1 seconds, respectively. Five conveyors can construct a route
< Ll ? No
S ( ) chain to transport the PA to the destination. Therefore, each
type of mixed candy can be orderly packaged as shown in
Yes Table. 1.

No Current level is complete 5.2 Experiment results and discussion

intervention ?

Yes The picking processing of nine types of candies is divided

Report the result to the manager
End
Fig. 6 The process of proposed intervention control
into four groups to demonstrate the different control effects
with different parameters as shown in Fig. 8. For the first
group without the cloud-assistant, the load ratio of ma1 is
92.3%, but ma2 , ma3 , ma4 and ma5 are all less than 2%.
S( ) is 0.165 indicating that a severe load-unbalancing has
occurred in the manufacturing system. This situation will
cause the waste of manufacturing resources to restrain the
further increase in the productivity. The second group with

123
 Cluster Comput

Fig. 7 System layout for

experiment of candy-picking
process Monitor
Server(cloud)

Robot4(MA4) Conveyor1(CA1)
Robot3(MA3) Robot2(MA2)
Robot5(MA5)
Conveyor2(CA2)

Robot1(MA1)
Conveyor5(CA5)

Conveyor4(CA4)

Conveyor3(CA3)
Product(PA)

Table 1 The processes of nine types of candies the highest and the lowest load ratios are 63% and 8.5%,
Part Pro.1 Pro.2 Pro.3 Pro.4 Pro.5 Pro.6 respectively and S( ) is down to 0.054. For the fourth group
with L l = 30, the highest and the lowest load ratios are
P1 A E A 54% and 13% respectively, and S( ) is decreased to 0.03.
P2 D E B D C E The load ratio of ma1 shows decreasing trend, but the load
P3 E C A B A ratios of other MAs (ma2 to ma5 ) show increasing trend. In
P4 D C B E contrast, the load ratios of all CAs (ca1 to ca5 ) are unchanged
P5 E B D at approximately 30%. In the experiment, both the highest
P6 A D A C load ratio of 33.4% and the lowest load ratio of 27.5% among
P7 C E A C ca1 to ca5 are in normal range. Therefore, the cloud-assistant
P8 A B C E intervention is not occurred during their negotiation.
P9 B D C From the results shown above, several conclusions are
obtained. After all MAs (ma1 to ma5 ) with different perfor-
mances negotiate, their load-unbalancing would occur. When
1
the indicator S() is lower than the preset threshold L l , the
L l = 10, shows that the highest load ratio is decreased cloud begins to intervene. With working load-balancing con-
to 78%, the lowest ratio is increased to 5.2% and S( ) is trol, the originally high load ratio of ma1 becomes lower and
down to 0.104. The third group with L l = 20, shows that the originally low load ratio of other MAs (ma2 to ma5 )

92.3 None-intervention L=10 L=20 L=30

78.2

63.2
load ratio [%]

54.5

32.3 33.1 33.4

31.2 31.3 32.1 32.1 32.1
30.2 30.1 30.3 29.2 30.6 29.2 30.8
29.7 28.2 28.6 27.5 28.5

16.2 17.3
13.5 13 13.8
11.5 10.7
7.9 8.5
5.3 5.2 5.2
1.8 1.64 1.8 1.04

ma1 ma2 ma3 ma4 ma5 ca1 ca2 ca3 ca4 ca5
Agent

Fig. 8 The experimental results

123
Cluster Comput
change to higher values. Once the cloud intervenes, the per-
formance of the system balance improves compared with
before. The performances of all CAs (ca1 to ca5 ) are sim-
ilar in the experiment. Therefore, load-unbalancing would
not occur after their negotiations. Moreover, the threshold L l
shows positive correlation with balance performance while
negative correlation with production efficiency. This indi-
cates that the increasing frequency of cloud intervention
causes a drop in productivity. Therefore, the threshold L l
should be tuned carefully in order to consider the trade-off
between the efficiency and the balance for achieving the suit-
able system performance.
6 Conclusions and future work
In this paper, the defects of load-unbalancing in manufac-
turing scheduling are studied on the basis of multi-agent
scheduling. The algorithms based on intelligent negotiation
mechanism are elaborately proposed to condition the load-
unbalancing in self-organized manufacturing system. The
experimental results demonstrate and validate the effectivity
and reliability of the proposed algorithms. The new proposed
control method has distinct advantages compared to the tra-
ditional manufacturing load balancing control. The proposed
method not only maintains the approximate degree of load-
balancing with traditional control, but also allows hybrid
production in manufacturing process. The focus of future
research will be in line with the purpose of this paper to con-
sider the different control effects with multi-group thresholds
L l and weights in the proposed algorithm. The future research
will include the investigation of the advanced technique and
concept of SOA that will act as the communication bridge
between the agents.
Acknowledgements This work was supported in part by the National
Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51605168), the National Pro-
gram on Key Basic Research Project of China (Grant No. 2013CB035
403), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong
Province (Grant Nos. 2016A010102008 and 2014B090921003), the
Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangzhou City (Grant
Nos. 201508030007 and 201604010064), the National Key Technol-
ogy R&D Program of China (No. 2014BAD08B01), and the program
Of Shanghai Subject Chief Scientist (Grant No. 14XD1402000).
References
1. Brettel, M., Friederichsen, N., Keller, M., Rosenberg, M.: How
virtualization, decentralization and network building change the
manufacturing landscape: an Industry 4.0 perspective. Int. J. Mech.
Ind. Sci. Eng. 8, 3744 (2014)
2. Guo, Q.L., Zhang, M.: An agent-oriented approach to resolve
scheduling optimization in intelligent manufacturing. Robot. Com-
put. Integr. Manuf. 26(1), 3945 (2010)
3. Vyatkin, V., Salcic, Z., Roop, P.S., Fitzgerald, J.: Now thats smart!.
IEEE Ind. Electron. Mag. 1(4), 1729 (2007)
4. Wan, J., Yi, M., Li, D., Zhang, C., Wang, S., Zhou, K.: Mobile
services for customization manufacturing systems: an example of
industry 4.0. IEEE Access. 4, 89778986 (2016)
5. Zhang, D., He, Z., Qian, Y., Wan, J., Li, D., Zhao, S.: Revisiting
unknown rfid tag identification in large-scale internet of things.
IEEE Wirel. Commun. 23(5), 2429 (2016)
6. Wan, J., Tang, S., Shu, Z., Li, D.: Software-defined industrial inter-
net of things in the context of industry 4.0. IEEE Sens. J. 16(20),
73737380 (2016)
7. Chen, F., Deng, P., Wan, J., Zhang, D., Vasilakos, A.V., Rong,
X.: Data mining for the internet of things: literature review and
challenges. Int. J. Distrib. Sens. Netw. (2015). doi:10.1155/2015/
431047
8. Harrison, R., Colombo, A.W.: Collaborative automation from rigid
coupling towards dynamic reconfigurable production systems.
IFAC Proc. Vol. 38(1), 184192 (2005)
9. Qiu, M., Sha, E.: Energy-aware online algorithm to satisfy sam-
pling rates with guaranteed probability for sensor applications,
Proceedings of the High Performance Computing and Commu-
nications, pp. 156167. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
10. Alamri, A., Ansari, W.S., Hassan, M.M., Hossain, M.S., Alelaiwi,
A., Hossain, M.A.: A survey on sensor-cloud: architecture, appli-
cations, and approaches. Int. J. Distrib. Sens. Netw. 9(9), 917923
(2013). doi:10.1155/2013/917923
11. Hassan, M.M., Hossain, M.S., Sarkar, A.M., Huh, E.: Cooperative
game-based distributed resource allocation in horizontal dynamic
cloud federation platform. Inform. Syst. Front. 16(4), 523542
(2014)
12. Preux, P., Delepoulle, S., Darcheville, J.C.: A generic architecture
for adaptive agents based on reinforcement learning. Inform. Sci.
161(1), 3755 (2004)
13. Leito, P.: Agent-based distributed manufacturing control: a state-
ofthe-art survey. Eng. Appl. Artif. Intell. 22(7), 979991 (2009)
14. Wang, S., Wan, J., Zhang, D., Li, D., Zhang, C.: Towards smart
factory for industry 4.0: a self-organized multi-agent system with
big data based feedback and coordination. Comput. Netw. 101,
158168 (2016)
15. Shu, Z., Wan, J., Zhang, D., Li, D.: Cloud-integrated cyber-physical
systems for complex industrial applications. Mob. Netw. Appl.
21(5), 114 (2015)
16. Huang, C.Y., Cheng, K., Holt, A.: An integrated manufacturing
network management framework by using mobile agent. Int. J.
Adv. Manuf. Technol. 32(7), 822833 (2007)
17. Lim, M.K., Zhang, Z.: Integrated manufacturing systems control
using a multiagent system. Proceedings of the 33rd International
MATADOR Conference, pp. 914. Springer, London (2000)
18. Grelle, C., Ippolito, L., Loia, V., Siano, P.: Agent-based architecture
for designing hybrid control systems. Inform. Sci. 176(9), 1103
1130 (2006)
19. Chen, S.H.: Computationally intelligent agents in economics and
finance. Inform. Sci. 177(5), 11531168 (2007)
20. Kadar, B., Monostori, L., Szelke, E.: An object-oriented framework
for developing distributed manufacturing architectures. J. Intell.
Manuf. 9(2), 173179 (1998)
21. Yuan, W., Deng, P., Taleb, T., Wan, J., Bi, C.: An unlicensed taxi
identification model based on big data analysis. IEEE Trans. Intell.
Transp. Syst. 17(6), 17031713 (2016)
22. Liu, Q., Wan, J., Zhou, K.: Cloud manufacturing service system for
industrial-cluster-oriented application. Jj. Internet Technol. 15(3),
373380 (2014)
23. Shen, W., Hao, Q., Yoon, H.J., Norrie, D.H.: Applications of agent-
based systems in intelligent manufacturing: an updated review.
Adv. Eng. Inform. 20(4), 415431 (2006)
123
 Cluster Comput

24. Cheung, L.S., Kwok, Y.K.: On load balancing approaches for Shiyong Wang was born in
distributed object computing systems. J. Supercomput. 27(2), 149 Huoqiu County, Anhui Province,
175 (2004) China, in 1981. He received
25. Bigham, J., Du, L.: Cooperative negotiation in a multi-agent sys- the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in
tem for real-time load balancing of a mobile cellular network. mechanical and electrical engi-
In: Proceedings of the second international joint conference on neering from South China Uni-
autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, pp. 568575. ACM versity of Technology, Guang-
(2003) zhou City, Guangdong Province,
26. Bigham, R.D., Du L., Thong W.S., Cuthbert L.: Management of call China, in 2010. Since 2010,
admissions in third generation mobile networks. In: Proceedings he has been a Lecturer with
of XVIII World Telecommunications Congress, Paris (2002) the Mechanical & Electrical
27. Bodanese, E., Cuthbert, L.: Intelligent agents for resource alloca- Engineering Department, South
tion in mobile networks. In: Proceedings of XVII World Telecom- China University of Technology.
munications Congress, Birmingham (2000) He is the author of more than
28. Wang, S., Wan, J., Imran, M., Li, D., Zhang, C.: Cloud-based 20 articles and holds five patents.
smart manufacturing for personalized candy packing application. J. His research interests include smart manufacturing, motion control, and
Supercomput. 1(1), 119 (2016). doi:10.1007/s11227-016-1879-4 robotics. Mr. Wang was a recipient of the First Prize for Science & Tech-
29. Wang, S., Wan, J., Li, D., Zhang, C.: Implementing smart factory of nology Development of Guangdong Province in 2009.
industrie 4.0: an outlook. Int. J. Distrib. Sens. Netw. (2016). doi:10.
1155/2016/3159805
Chengliang Liu received the
B.E. degree from Shandong Uni-
versity of Technology, Shan-
Di Li is currently a Profes-
dong, China and the M.E. and
sor with the School of Mechan-
Ph.D. degrees from Southeast
ical and Automotive Engineer-
University, Nanjing, China, in
ing, South China University of
1991 and 1998, respectively. He
Technology, Guangzhou, China.
has been invited as a Senior
She has directed more than 50
Scholar at the University of
research projects, including the
Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the
National Natural Science Foun-
University of Wisconsin, Madi-
dation of China, etc. Thus so
son, since 2001. He is currently
far, she has authored/coauthored
a professor in the department of
more than 180 scientific papers.
mechanical engineering, Shang-
Her research interests include
hai Jiao Tong University, Shang-
embedded systems, computer
hai, China. His current interests include mechatronic systems, intel-
vision, and cyber-physical sys-
ligent maintenance, MEMS design, intelligent robot control, remote
tems.
monitoring techniques and condition based monitoring.

Hao Tang was born in Hainan

province, China. He received the
B.E. degree in mechanical engi-
neering from Sichuan University,
China, in 2014. He is study-
ing for a Ph.D. in South China
University of Technology. His
research interests include intel-
ligent manufacturing, industrial
big data, embedded system and
motion control.

123