Evaluating the Prometheus methodology through a case study on designing an agent-based holonic control system
by Martyn Fletcher
International Journal of Manufacturing Research (IJMR), Vol. 2, No. 3, 2007

Abstract: An agent-based manufacturing system is a new breed of industrial control environment where autonomous software entities, called agents, cooperate to manage the hardware in a factory in a decentralised and intelligent manner. These control systems allow new product families to be introduced on the fly and empower the machinery to late-customise products. This paper analyses the applicability of Prometheus, one of the popular methodologies for designing general-purpose agent-based systems. The paper examines how useful Prometheus is for designing agent-based industrial control systems. An industrial-strength, flexible material-handling environment provides the experimental test-bed for this analysis. The key conclusion is that this methodology is very suitable for developing static interactions between agents, but lacks sufficient power to handle several of the requirements associated with a real-world industrial environment, e.g., openness of new agent types and services, system development using bottom-up design approaches and dynamic reconfiguration of the manufacturing processes.

Online publication date: Thu, 02-Aug-2007

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Manufacturing Research (IJMR):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

    Username:        Password:         

Forgotten your password?


Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com