Update on tractor technology The new John Deere 7290R.. an amazing advance in tractor technology

Update on tractor technology John Deere makes tractors, planters, and lots more In the 1980s, their manufacturing complexity became overwhelming... thousands of products... billions of possible combinations...

In trying to fill hundreds of custom orders each day, they faced: Problems Horrific traffic jams in the plant Machines in demand at more than one place at a time Others remained idle with nothing to do

What to do? Engineers couldn't find efficient production schedules, what to build, in which order. But eventually, Bill Fulkerson had a creative idea: what's more intelligent than the human brain?

Answer: Evolution

How does evolution work? Three things: Differential replication (fitter organisms survive and send more offspring into the next generation)‏ Random variation (mutations and sexual recombination create new types)‏ Process repeats many times

Can these three components be used to design... manufacturing schedules?

Start with a “population” of random schedules Make tractorMake planterMake ??Maintain machines Schedule 1 Schedule 2 Schedule 3 Time of day None of these will be any good, but let them evolve...

Calculate the “fitness” of each schedule.. faster means fitter Schedule 1 Schedule 2 Schedule hours 200 hours 360 hours Then let population reproduce, with fitter schedules having more offspring

Include variation and time Introduce innovation (variation) in each generation through mutation and sexual recombination; let the population explore new designs Repeat for many generations

Results? Early on, all schedules perform poorly After evolution overnight, some schedules outperformed anything the engineers could design They work -- but NO ONE really understands why!!

Evolutionary computing Has now been applied to: aircraft design X-ray image interpretation drug discovery, etc. A shift in science: We don't find solutions, but design processes capable of finding their own solutions.