Seminar on From Systems Thinking to Multi-Agent Architectures for Manufacturing

06 Aug 2026 03.00 PM - 04.00 PM LHN-TR+30 (The Arc, LHN-L1-18) Current Students, Public

Professor Kim Sang-Gook

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), United States

This seminar will be chaired by A/P Moon Seung Ki.

Seminar Abstract

Despite decades of research and investment in Industry 4.0, manufacturing systems remain largely data-driven rather than knowledge-driven. A critical capability for smart manufacturing is enabling humans and AI agents to reason across machines, processes, and operations by integrating heterogeneous data, engineering knowledge, and operational context. Much of this tacit expertise resides in experienced engineers and operators, embedded in heuristics, pattern recognition, and engineering judgment.

Guided by systems thinking, this presentation addresses two key challenges in manufacturing specific agentic AI: contextualizing multimodal industrial data and operationalizing tacit expert knowledge. An AI-based rationale elicitation agent is introduced to reconstruct expert decision rationale using Axiomatic Design, transforming implicit engineering knowledge into structured, machine-interpretable representations. Building on this, a multi-agent reasoning and orchestration architecture enables explainable, auditable, and trustworthy AI agents to collaborate with human experts in complex engineering decisions.

The long-term vision is to enable knowledge-driven intelligent manufacturing systems that preserve institutional knowledge and support transparent, scalable AI reasoning and coordination.

Speaker's Biography 

Sang-Gook Kim is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He received his B.S. degree from Seoul National University (1978), M.S. from KAIST (1980), and Ph.D. from MIT (1985). He held positions at Axiomatics Co., Cambridge, MA (1986) and Korea Institute of Science and Technology (1986-1991). He was a corporate executive director at Daewoo Corporation, Korea, directing the Central Research Institute of Daewoo Electronics Co. until he joined MIT in 2000. His research interest includes piezoelectric MEMS energy harvesting, nano-engineered energy conversion devices and solar absorbers and, most recently, AI for design and Manufacturing. He is a fellow of CIRP (International Academy for Production Engineering), fellow of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), and overseas member of Korean National Academy of Engineering.

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