Swarm Intelligence in Production Management and Engineering

Abstract

This chapter explores the scope of biologically inspired swarm intelligence (SI) into production management with special emphasis in two specific problems of vehicle routing and motion planning of mobile robots. Computer simulations undertaken for this study have also been included to demonstrate the elegance in the application of the proposed theory in the said real-world problems. Possible directions of future research and industrial applications have also been appended at the end of the chapter.