Agent-Based Control of Production Systems-and Its Architectural Challenges

Increasing system complexity and flexibility are two major trends in production systems, leading to increasingly problematic control architectures and implementation processes. Oft-discussed solutions for this problem are agent-oriented control systems and agent technology, enabling a more suitable management of design, implementation, and use complexity. Within this paper, best practices reached in this field over the last several years are summarized. They give a short but consistent overview about the current borderline of the applicability of agent-oriented control systems in production systems. Based on this borderline, future challenges concerning agent technology for production control systems are derived and a vision about how to address them is presented.