Enhancing Workflow Management in the Manufacturing Information System of a Small-Medium Enterprise: An Agent-Based Approach

One shortcoming of manufacturing information systems is their inability to integrate and to enhance different information and related functionalities, such as those found in workflow management. Software agents, once added as a new software layer to an existing system, can overcome this problem. Of the fields applying software agent technology, manufacturing, and especially workflow management, is perhaps the most promising for the development of distributed systems. This potential is reflected in the several ongoing research projects that focus on workflow management and share the final aim of integrating and coordinating plant and business activities.