On the design of emergent systems: an investigation of integration and interoperability issues

Many useful manmade systems in this world are extremely complex; a typical example is a large infrastructure. No design team ever invents these artifacts because they are too complex. These artifacts are made by combining existing elements (legacy) and by building new subsystems without explicit and comprehensive up-front coordination. To a large extent, these complex systems emerge and evolve. Experience shows that designers frequently fail to develop artifacts that, when combined, facilitate the emergence of effective and efficient systems. This paper formally elaborates the mechanism behind this phenomenon, and proposes principles for the design of components for emergent systems. The above insights were gained during the development of research prototypes for multi-agent manufacturing control; manufacturing systems are notorious for experiencing integration and interoperability problems as described above. Consequently, the design principles are discussed and illustrated on the design of multi-agent manufacturing control systems but also on work by others. Finally, although this paper mainly discusses the above in a generic fashion, and although the generic statements hold in an application-independent manner, it is important to appreciate that the applicability of the above insights and principles has significant limitations, which are discussed in the paper. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.