Stigmergy-based Software Toolkit for Virtual Enterprises

This paper aims at illustrating how a stigmergic approach can easily improve the speed and the stability of a planning process in an agile production environment. Adapting the collective behaviour of ant colonies to a stigmergic cooperation mechanism, logistically improved by a communication agent and a realistic environment, translates into powering the manufacturing resources in solving the production process. In the framework described below every ant agent takes care of one piece of work/task. Following the pattern available for a product, the ant colony first plans the way between raw material to final product and then follows the execution, dealing with unexpected situations. By using the same environment in planning and in tracing the products, it is kept up to date and also is the planning. Key-Words: virtual enterprise, stigmergy, ant farms, agents, environment eave.