Architecture for an Order Oriented Distributed Production System: Interoperability between Production Planning and Control and Industrial Automation

Manufacturing companies suffering constant pressure from the market, in a scene of mass customization in large scale, are obliged to become agile and flexible. In last decade appeared several proposals of distributed architectures of production to addresses the market requirements. These proposals are mainly based on the following paradigms: Bionic Manufacturing System, Holonic Manufacturing System and Fractal Factory. These paradigms have some common characteristics; they are essentially distributed system composed by distributed cooperative and autonomy units. The concept is adherent to the concept of agents or multi-agent system. This document will approach multi-agent system, the application of multi-agent technology in production and resource allocation dynamically, and the interface of this architecture with machines.