Shop Floor Control: A Physical Agents Approach for PLC-Controlled Systems

Multiagent technology raised great expectations from the outset, and these expectations are still high today. A technology that allows the creation of systems that are autonomous, reactive, proactive, and have entities with social skills is necessarily very appealing. Many initiatives have emerged to develop the application of this technology in different areas, including manufacturing. Multiagent-based solutions typically use this technology to create distributed systems with decentralized decision making as a way to tackle complex systems or problems by dividing the complexity among agents. Unfortunately, most works do not go further than the definition of agents or architectures, which prevents industry from adopting this technology. This paper presents an approach to implementing the shop floor control of an automated distribution center following a multiagent approach. This implementation divides the system into agents in charge of the management of the system while highlighting the communication channels with shop floor control equipment.