Agent-Based Manufacturing and Control Systems

Traditional manufacturing systems rely upon centralized, hierarchical systems that are not responsive enough to the increasing demand for mass customization. Decentralized, or heterarchical, management systems using autonomous agents promise to nullify the limitations of previous solutions. Agent-Based Manufacturing and Control Systems: New Agile Manufacturing Solutions for Achieving Peak Performance offers a survey of both the literature and the practical applications of this technology. Using a realistic example of a fictitious firm throughout, the book indicates when agent-based systems are appropriate, enumerates techniques to decompose a problem into entities that can be modeled as agents, provides a step-by-step guide to implementation, and offers hints for using simulation to design the system. The authors pay particular attention to object-oriented techniques and to the selection of appropriate tools and inter-agent communication standards, with specific reference to JADE middleware and FIPA framework. Practical, applicative, and thoroughly modern, this text provides all the tools necessary for implementing an extremely flexible, robust, adaptive, and fault-tolerant manufacturing system. This is the perfect reference for AI researchers, industrial manufacturing engineers, operations researchers, and plant managers who wish to develop the most efficient manufacturing systems available.