Making Manufacturing Changes Less Disruptive: Agent-Driven Integration

This paper presents some results of our recent investigation on how to address changes in manufacturing environments. The results presented here are based on our recent visits to manufacturing plants (in order to understand current industria practice) and a comprehensive literature review. It has become apparent that agents and multi-agents based technologies have the power and flexibility to deal with the shop dynamics. This paper also discusses research opportunities and challenges in this area, presents our recent research work in developing agent-based technologies to streamline and coordinate design and production activities within a manufacturing enterprise, and between the enterprise and its suppliers.