Multi-agent systems in production planning and control: an overview

The ever fast changes of customers’ needs and demands ask for reconfigurable and adaptive production systems, which can provide companies with the proper level of agility and effectiveness, without disregarding at the same time cost factors. In the last decade, a large amount of research works on the adoption of multi-agent systems (MAS) in several industrial environments has flourished. This approach, unlike traditional centralized or multilevel hierarchical approaches, assumes the presence of several decision-making entities, distributed inside the manufacturing system, interacting and cooperating each other in order to achieve optimal global performance. Aim of this paper is at first to provide readers, which are not experienced with the multi-agent approach, with some definitions and categorizations of this paradigm. Secondarily, by making use of an extensive database of more than 100 contributions on this field, authors intend to evaluate how multi-agents systems have really impacted on the industrial practices at an enterprise and at a broader supply chain level. Finally, driven by the past research experiences of the authors and by the extensive literature search, considerations and remarks on the real potential benefits and on the major issues currently inhibiting the spread out of this paradigm are reported.