An agent-driven approach to design factory information systems

This paper presents an agent-driven approach for the design of factory information systems. The approach exploits the object/agent-oriented paradigm to construct a factory information system by networking domain-dedicated responsible manufacturing planning and control software agents. The paper presents the agent-based perspective adopted, and then discusses the generic architecture of agent-based factory information systems. Two illustrative examples are provided, one based on the hierarchical manufacturing planning and control scheme behind the ISO/TC 184 AG N 19-20 reference model shop floor production control, and a second based on a distributed planning and control scheme derived from a commercial implementation by the authors, of an agent-based factory information system.