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Ch28-I044963.fm Page 137 Thursday, July 27, 2006 7:12 AM
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7:12 AM
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RFID tag (Toner cartridge)
RFID tag (Photoconductor unit)
RFID tag (Base)

Figure 4 Components used for case study Figure 5 And/or graph of the product

Base -> no demand
P.C.unit
-> Request from k27-4321
Toner cartridge
-> Request from k27-1234

(a) RFID detection (b) product agent window showing reuse plan (c) work instruction
Figure 6 Case study (Extraction of photoconductor unit and toner cartridge by a human worker)

Base -> no demand
P.C.unit-> no demand ^
Toner cartridge
-> Request from k27-1234

(a) RFID detection (b) product agent window showing reuse plan (c) robot operation
Figure 7 Case study (Extraction of toner cartridge by a robot)
Then the worker selects the human worker button in the window. Normally, the product agent retrieves
the available operation agents from the facility database. However, in this case, there is only one
operation agent, that presents instructions to a human worker. Then, the operation agent opens a web
browser and presents a web page for an URL address. The web pages are presented in order with
respect to the disassembly. These pages are not hyperlinked. The operation agent arranges the URL
addresses appropriately to correspond to the operation sequence.

As another case, we assume only a toner cartridge is demanded by a maker, and a robot executes the
disassembly operations along with a human worker. In the trial, after instruction for opening a lid of
the printer is given to a worker, the robot replaces the toner cartridge. Figure 7 shows the robot
performing the replacing operation.

Through these case studies, the agents performed as expected and the realization of the agent-based
system was confirmed.

Effects of Agent-based Implementation
As for the case studies described in above section, even a non-agent system seems to be able to