Classification and Review of Multi-Agents Systems in the Manufacturing Section

Current technology and especially Artificial Intelligence effectively increase productivity and take cost out of operations in the Manufacturing sector. One of the main representatives of information technology in the industrial applications are agents. This paper suggests a way to a) categorize multi-agent systems according to the coordination mode among agents and b) classify agents that take action on them, depending on their functions It examines the main approaches of multi-agent architectures, according to their coordination way. The main coordination types are: a) centralized multi-agent coordination (or coordinator agents), in which one central agent undertakes the collection of partial plans from agents, combines them in a plan and solves possible conflicts and b) decentralized multi-agent coordination (or autonomous agents), in which agents are not controlled by a central agent although they communicate with each other for the creation of their plans and the solution of possible arguments. Although there are several aspects that we can consider in order to classify CAD, CAPP and CAM multi-agent systems, this review develops a classification scheme, based on interaction characteristics. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.