Agent-Based Technology as a Tool for the Integration of Manufacturing Systems

Agent-based technology provides a natural way to design and implement efficient manufacturing environments. In this paper we emphasize features of state-of the art manufacturing systems. Furthermore we present fundamentals of agent based systems and an agent-based framework for the coordination and integration of manufacturing systems. It models each stage or process as an autonomous agent. Each agent is a software entity that has a set of protocols which govern the operations of the manufacturing entity, a knowledge base, an inference mechanism and an explicit model of the problem to solve. The protocols specify what action an agent will take based on its local state and the messages received from other agents.