An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems.

This discussion paper aims to set out the key challenges and opportunities emerging from distributed manufacturing (DM). We begin by describing the concept, available definitions and consider its evolution where recent production technology developments (such as additive and continuous production process technologies), digitisation together with infrastructural developments (in terms of IoT and big data) provide new opportunities. To further explore the evolving nature of DM, the authors, each of whom are involved in specific applications of DM research, examine through an expert panel workshop environment emerging DM applications involving new production and supporting infrastructural technologies. This paper presents these generalisable findings on DM challenges and opportunities in terms of products, enabling production technologies and the impact on the wider production and industrial system. Industry structure and location of activities are examined in terms of the democratising impact on participating network actors. The paper concludes with a discussion on the changing nature of manufacturing as a result of DM, from the traditional centralised, large-scale, long lead-time forecast-driven production operations to a new DM paradigm where manufacturing is a decentralised, autonomous near end user-driven activity. A forward research agenda is proposed that considers the impact of DM on the industrial and urban landscape.

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Distributed manufacturing: scope, challenges and opportunities

Industrial agents technology leverages the benefits of multiagent systems, distributed computing, artificial intelligence techniques and semantics in the field of production, services and infrastructure sectors, providing a new way to design and engineer control solutions based on the decentralization of control over distributed structures. The key drivers for this application are the benefits of agent-based industrial systems, namely in terms of robustness, scalability, reconfigurability and productivity, all of which translate to a greater competitive advantage. This manuscript monitors the chronology of research and development of the industrial applications of multiagent and holonic systems. It provides the comprehensive overview of methodologies, architectures and applications of agents in industrial domain from early nineties up to present. It also gives an outlook of the current trends as well as challenges and possible future application domains of industrial agents.

Past, Present, and Future of Industrial Agent Applications

This paper proposes a novel approach to achieving fast reconfiguration of modular manufacturing systems, based on an ontology-based reconfiguration agent. The agent uses ontological knowledge of the manufacturing environment for the purpose of reconfiguration without human intervention. The current mass customization era requires increased flexibility and agility in the manufacturing systems to adapt changes in manufacturing requirements and environments. Our configuration agent minimises the overheads of the current reconfiguration process by automating it. It infers facts about the manufacturing environment from the ontological knowledge model and then decides whether the current environment can support the given manufacturing requirements. This paper proposes the agent architecture enabling the integration between the high level planning with the distributed low level control compliant with the upcoming IEC 61499 function blocks standard.

Ontology-based reconfiguration agent for intelligent mechatronic systems in flexible manufacturing

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of long-term R&D activities of the Rockwell Automation (RA) company in the field of holonic and agent-based manufacturing control systems. It presents a coherent framework of methodologies for designing agent-based control systems, tools that support implementation and validation of them, and agent applications that were developed for various industrial systems. The common attribute is the integration of novel techniques, such as multiagent systems or semantics with the current “old-fashioned” automation architectures represented mainly by programmable logic controllers. Retaining the ability of the control system to meet the strict real-time constraints and concurrently raise its intelligence has always been of highest importance. The paper does not focus merely on RA's work, but discusses all its aspects in a context of other existing works in this area.

Rockwell Automation's Holonic and Multiagent Control Systems Compendium

This paper presents a proposal for a manufacturing upper ontology, aimed to draft a common semantic net in manufacturing domain. Usefulness of ontologies for data formalization and sharing, especially in a manufacturing environment, are first discussed. Details are given about the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and its adequation for ontologies in the manufacturing systems is shown. A concrete proposal named MASON (MAnufacturings Semantics ONtology) is presented and two applications of this ontology are exposed: automatic cost estimation and semantic-aware multiagent system for manufacturing.

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A. Siadat

Papers

MASON: A Proposal For An Ontology Of Manufacturing Domain