Infrastructure for co-ordination of multi-agents in a network-based manufacturing system

Global competition, shorter lead times and customer demands for increasing product variety have collectively forced the manufacturing enterprises to rapidly develop and introduce new products to obtain quick return on their investments. The variations in today's manufacturing scenario are directly driven by the requirements for a product's price, quality, delivery performance, customer choices, etc. As a consequence, adaptability, reflexivity and responsiveness are a common denominator for judging the competitive advantage of the manufacturing firms. The inclusion of these characteristics entices the implementation of the concepts of distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) and information-based manufacturing. Thus a synergized use of agent-based manufacturing (derived from DAI) and supporting information architecture is well suited in the contemporary manufacturing arena for dealing with variations and uncertainties. In this paper, a conceptual infrastructure for information-based control architecture is discussed and special emphasis is put on multi-level co-ordination.