Knowledge-enriched shop floor control in end-of-life business

Ever-stricter environmental legislation over the past decade has led to the emergence of the end-of-life (EOL) industrial sector, e.g. remanufacturing of products, recycling of material and the recovery of energy. Due to uncertainties over returned product quantities, product quality and product diversity, production planning and control in EOL activities is quite different from those in the forward supply chain. In fact, those uncertainties can be diminished by enhancing the exploitation of the related information generated throughout the product lifecycle. Product lifecycle management provides an opportunity to access and share the distributed information generally available in the product lifecycle, while agent-based systems have been found to be effective tools in such large, uncertain environments. In this article, a product lifecycle information system that deploys agents is introduced into a typical EOL shop floor control system to provide lifecycle information for the returned product for decision-making. Supported by radio frequency identification technology, the product itself controls processes aggressively and autonomously in a system designed to minimise uncertainty. A case study of how the system supports shop floor planning and control in a plastics recycling plant is described at the end of the article.