Agentifying the process: task-based or robot-based decomposition?

In this paper we advocate the use of multi-agent systems in cellular manufacturing. More specifically, we argue that multi-agent systems can respond to the flexibility and adaptivity needs of modern manufacturing. The central issue of the design of such a multi-agent manufacturing system is the choice of the granularity level: are agents defined by decomposing the whole process across tasks or across robots? We argue that at different levels of the production plant we need different decomposition grains, robot-based, task-based or hybrid, and that this granularity decision should be driven by the criteria of control localisation, knowledge decoupling and interaction minimisation, so as to identify the decision points of the overall process. Those criteria define a dual composition and decomposition relation that appears as a good substrate for system scaling