Scalability and robustness analysis of a multi-agent based self-healing resource-flow system

In resource-flow systems e.g. production lines resources are processed by agents applying certain capabilities to them. Such systems profit from self-organization like self-healing as they become more robust against failures. In this paper the development of a decentralized coordination process for such a system is described. The system is realized as a multi-agent system for the purpose of simulating large systems. Furthermore, a stochastic model is developed and compared to the simulation results. The scalability and robustness of the proposed coordination process is shown in good agreement of simulation results and analytic results for the stochastic model.