MAST: From a Toy to Real-Life Manufacturing Control

Paper reports on the evolution of agent-based simulation and control system called MAST. The system was designed originally for agent-based simulation of product routing but over the years matured into a generic purpose manufacturing simulation and control tool featuring real-time connectivity to legacy PLCs, ontology-based dynamic scheduling, advanced diagnostics, etc. Paper describes MAST architecture, behavior of agents and capabilities for dynamic reconfiguration. In addition, two examples of application of MAST to real problems from manufacturing domain are given. The latest trend of exploitation of semantic technologies in industrial agents is discussed.