A process/agent/operation paradigm for manufacturing systems modelling

Modern manufacturing systems require advanced modelling methods for their analysis, design and reengineering. Horizontal approaches focusing on the modelling of business processes and the supply chain integration are now advocated in order to facilitate logistics management and break down organisational barriers impeding enterprise integration. In this paper, a new process-based approach is presented. It is based on a process / agent / operation paradigm in which the manufacturing enterprise is considered as a large discrete event dynamic system made of a set of concurrent processes and a set of communicating agents executing process steps. The link between processes and agents is materialised by functional operations which are basic primitives being executed by agents and defining the lowest level of functional decomposition within processes. Processes are defined as partially ordered sets of process steps, or activities, employing functional operations. Agents are active resources of the manufacturing system able to perform actions on request. These principles are illustrated on a simple order processing scenario. Copyright (C) 1998 IFAC.