A survey of factory control algorithms that can be implemented in a multi-agent heterarchy: Dispatching, scheduling, and pull

This paper describes various multi-agent architectures, including the heterarchical architecture. It reviews the claimed advantages for multi-agent heterarchies and describes the types of factories that could use this architecture. It surveys the three common types of factory control algorithms: dispatching algorithms, scheduling algorithms, and pull algorithms. It then asks the question: which of these algorithms can be implemented in a multi-agent heterarchy? This paper describes how all common factory control algorithms used in industry can be implemented in a multi-agent heterarchy. It discusses how many of the algorithms that are popular in current research can be implemented in a multi-agent heterarchy, while others will require further research.