The authors are involved in a major, industrially-funded, research project which is connecting manufactured components and products to the internet. The Auto-ID project will enable unique information about a particular item to be stored, retrieved, communicated to others and even used in automated decision making relevant to that item. In this way we begin to build a specification for an intelligent product – one whose information content is permanently bound to its material content. This paper will begin to explore the impact of such developments on manufacturing shop floor control and management and will in particular, examine the way in which so called distributed, intelligent manufacturing control methods can be enhanced.
