Multi-agent Model to Control Production System: A Reactive and Emergent Approach by Cooperation and Competition between Agents

In view of strong competitive markets, current companies tend to new methods of production, from a logic of «planning» type of production to a logical of «Just in time » type. In this context, the system that allows controlling the production has to be a modular, flexible and reactive system. The hierarchized and classical approaches don’t permit any more to take into account the complexity linked to such system. That’s why, we propose an approach, which has reactive, distributive, and emergent properties to control the system of production, based on multi-agent system principles. After having introduced the context and reasoning work, we describe the different parts of our multi-agent model. Lastly, we illustrate this approach on a practical example of cell production.