Agent-Based Distributed Collaborative Monitoring and Maintenance in Manufacturing

This paper proposes an agent-based approach for real-time collaborative monitoring and maintenance of equipments and machines. The proposed approach automates the maintenance management process by utilizing intelligent software agents. The maintenance schedules are achieved by automated real time negotiation among software agents representing geographically distributed field engineers and a broker. The paper presents a detailed system design and a prototype implementation of the collaborative monitoring and maintenance system which can be used by maintenance managers in manufacturing industry as a tool to improve the efficiency and quality of maintenance scheduling. Test results show that the proposed approach has potential for automating the maintenance management process in manufacturing environments.