System and method for production system operations timing

A method for optimizing the timing and duration of speed reductions of a plurality of subsystems of a production system, comprising performing, by at least one computing device, coupled to a memory, the steps of:

• providing a set of agents associated with the subsystems, one agent corresponding to one subsystem;
• providing a throughput target for the agents;
• and
• providing a common production throughput objective for the agents;
• wherein an agent determine policies and participates in a sampled fictitious play algorithm to manage system speed reductions based on the throughput targets and the common production throughput objective, the sampled fictitious play algorithm comprises:
• providing a policy to the agents;
• logging policies of the agents to maintain a historical record of policies;
• and
• in successive iterations:
• generating a plurality of joint policies of the agents from the historical record;
• the agents independently determining a policy assuming other agents jointly choose one of the plurality of joint policies at random;
• synthesizing the policies determined by the agents into a synthetic joint policy;
• adding to the historical record by logging the policies determined by the agents;
• and
• evaluating the expected value of the synthetic joint policy based on the throughput targets and the common production throughput objective;
• wherein iterations continue until a stopping criterion is met.

A system for managing the timing and duration of speed reductions of a plurality of subsystems of a production system, the system including at least one computing device coupled to a memory having stored thereon a plurality of modules;

• an agent module for providing a set of agents associated with the subsystems, one agent corresponding to one subsystem;
• a throughput target module for providing a throughput target for an agent;
• an objective module for providing, for the agents, a common production throughput objective;
• and
• a sampled fictitious play module for providing instructions of a sampled fictitious play algorithm wherein the agents provided by the agent module participate in the sampled fictitious play algorithm to manage system speed reductions based on the throughput targets provided by the throughput target module and the common production throughput objective provided by the objective module, and wherein the sampled fictitious play module includes:
• an initialization module for providing a policy to the agents
• a logging module for logging the policies of the agents to create a historical record of policies
• a generating module for generating a plurality of joint policies of the agents from the historical record
• a determining module for the agents for independently determining a policy assuming other agents jointly choose one of the plurality of joint policies at random;
• a synthesizing module for synthesizing the policies determined by the agents into a synthetic joint policy;
• and
• an evaluation module for evaluating the expected value of the synthetic joint policy based on the throughput targets and the common production throughput objective;
• wherein the logging, generating, determining, synthesizing, and evaluation modules are executed iteratively until a stopping criterion is met.