Common production process modeling for MES based on multi-agent

In discrete manufacturing enterprises, the production processes are complex and varied. In order to construct a manufacturing execution system (MES), up to 70% of the work must be customized. This cost represents a tremendous waste when MES are developed, especially in terms of development cycles. In this paper, a flexible method for designing the common production process of an MES is proposed using multi-agents. The enterprise framework is described by an automaton. The whole MES is modeled by a multi-agents system (MAS), which contains databases, order agents, environment agents, and control monitors. With the efforts of these multi-agents, the MES is able to become more intelligent and more efficient, and it can work without intervention from the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.