Agent-Based Synthesis of Distributed Controllers for Discrete Manufacturing Systems

A method for designing real-time distributed controllers of discrete manufacturing systems is presented. The approach held is agent based; the controller strategy is distributed into several interacting agents that operate each one on a part of the manufacturing process; these agents may be distributed into several interconnected processors. The proposed method consists of a modelling methodology and software development framework that provides a generic agent architecture and communication facilities supporting the interaction among agents.