A Multi-Agent System Based Approach to Intelligent Process Automation Systems

A more promising technology to integrate existing software systems and their functionalities and to add assistant systems for the shop floors is to be found in software agents. Concerning with the applications of agent technology to intelligent process automation systems, a flexible and extensible approach based on multi-agent system (MAS) and distributed planning technique to reach for increased flexibility and fault-tolerance in process monitoring and control operations is proposed. The monitoring operations are aimed at combining information from different sources depending on the monitoring tasks. The control operations are supervisory control tasks performing either in both sequential and iterative forms. The agent layer is used for monitoring the operations of the lower-level automation systems and reconfiguring its control logic. It operates as a distributed planning and plan execution system to increase the operational flexibility of the whole process automation systems. The software architecture and its functionalities and components for the implementation of the proposed approach are also presented. The design strategy and the discussion on the proposed approach are provided.