Agent-based control of manufacturing systems

Management of complexity, changes and disturbances is one of the key issues in production today. Distributed, agent-based (holonic) structures represent viable alternatives to hierachical systems provided with reactive/proactive capabilities. The paper outlines the difficulties which hinder their industrial acceptance. Several approaches to overcome these barriers are introduced, i.e. the use of simulation techniques for developing and testing agent-based control architectures, the holonification of existing resources and traditional (centralized/hierarchical) manufacturing systems. Finally, the cooperative use of agent-based distributed control structures and the more centralized (e.g. GA-based) schedulers is proposed aiming at systems which can handle critical complexity, reactivity, disturbance and optimality issues at the same time.