Context and implications of learning in Evolvable Production Systems

More than ever the impact of market turbulence, high product customization and sustainability can be perceived through the increase of dynamics and complexity of manufacturing and business environments. Modular and distributed control structures are nowadays a consensual way, common to the majority of modern paradigms, to deal with unpredictability and volatility of markets. With modern paradigms aiming on adaptability, evolution and re-configuration as a way to deal with this reality, learning mechanism have become very important to achieve such requirements. This paper presents an exploratory discussion on the topic of agent-based learning applied in a modern production paradigm such as Evolvable Production Systems (EPS).