Intelligent multi-agent coordination system for advanced manufacturing

Global competition and rapidly changing customer requirements are forcing major changes in the production styles and configuration of manufacturing organizations. Agent-based systems are showing considerable potential as a new paradigm for agile manufacturing systems. With this approach, centralized and sequential manufacturing planning, scheduling, and control systems may be replaced by distributed intelligent systems to facilitate flexible and rapid response to changing production styles and variations in product requirements. In this paper, the characteristics and components of such a multi-agent architecture for advanced manufacturing are described. This architecture addresses agility in terms of the ability of the manufacturing system to solve manufacturing tasks using virtual enterprise mechanisms while maintaining concurrent information processing and control.

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