Industrial agents in the era of service-oriented architectures and cloudbased industrial infrastructures

The umbrella paradigm underpinning novel collaborative industrial systems is to consider the set of intelligent system units as a conglomerate of distributed, autonomous, intelligent, proactive, fault-tolerant, and reusable units, which operate as a set of cooperating entities (Colombo and Karnouskos, 2009). These entities are forming an evolvable infrastructure, entering and/or going out (plug-in/plugout) in an asynchronous manner. Moreover, these entities, having each of them their own functionalities, data, and associated information are now connected and able to interact. They are capable of working in a proactive manner, initiating collaborative actions and dynamically interacting with each other in order to achieve both local and global objectives.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An engineering framework for Service-Oriented Intelligent Manufacturing Systems

Nowadays fully integrated enterprises are being replaced by business networks in which each participant provides others with specialized services. As a result, the Service Oriented Manufacturing Systems emerges. These systems are complex and hard to engineer. The main source of complexity is the number of different technologies, standards, functions, protocols, and execution environments that must be integrated in order to realize them. This paper proposes a framework and associated engineering approach for assisting the system developers of Service Oriented Manufacturing Systems. The approach combines multi-agent system with Service Oriented Architectures for the development of intelligentautomation control and execution of manufacturing systems.Giret Boggino, AS.; Garcia Marques, ME.; Botti Navarro, VJ. (2016). An engineering framework for Service-Oriented Intelligent Manufacturing Systems. Computers in Industry. 81:116-127. doi:10.1016/j.compind.2016.02.002S1161278

An Agent-based Approach for Improving the Performance of Distributed Business Processes in Maritime Port Community

In the recent years, the concept of “port community” has been adopted by the maritime transport industry in order to achieve a higher degree of coordination and cooperation amongst organizations involved in the transfer of goods through the port area. The business processes of the port community supply chain form a complicated process which involves several process steps, multiple actors, and numerous information exchanges. One of the widely used applications of ICT in ports is the Port Community System (PCS) which is implemented in ports in order to reduce paperwork and to facilitate the information flow related to port operations and cargo clearance. However, existing PCSs are limited in functionalities that facilitate the management and coordination of material, financial, and information flows within the port community supply chain. This research programme addresses the use of agent technology to introduce business process management functionalities, which are vital for port communities, aiming to the enhancement of the performance of the port community supply chain. The investigation begins with an examination of the current state in view of the business perspective and the technical perspective. The business perspective focuses on understanding the nature of the port community, its main characteristics, and its problems. Accordingly, a number of requirements are identified as essential amendments to information systems in seaports. On the other hand, the technical perspective focuses on technologies that are convenient for solving problems in business process management within port communities. The research focuses on three technologies; the workflow technology, agent technology, and service orientation. An analysis of information systems across port communities enables an examination of the current PCSs with regard to their coordination and workflow management capabilities. The most important finding of this analysis is that the performance of the business processes, and in particular the performance of the port community supply chain, is not in the scope of the examined PCSs. Accordingly, the Agent-Based Middleware for Port Community Management (ABMPCM) is proposed as an approach for providing essential functionalities that would facilitate collaborative planning and business process management. As a core component of the ABMPCM, the Collaborative Planning Facility (CPF) is described in further details. A CPF prototype has been developed as an agent-based system for the domain of inland transport of containers to demonstrate its practical effectiveness. To evaluate the practical application of the CPF, a simulation environment is introduced in order to facilitate the evaluation process. The research started with the definition of a multi-agent simulation framework for port community supply chain. Then, a prototype has been implemented and employed for the evaluation of the CPF. The results of the simulation experiments demonstrate that our agent-based approach effectively enhances the performance of business process in the port community

Coordination Of Hierarchical Command And Control Services

The purpose of this program is to show emerging information technologies can significantly improve key areas of tactical operations, resulting in the conversion of software developed under the ATO to existing battlefield systems. One such key area is Information Dissemination and Management (ID&M). The key software that will be developed under the ID&M portion requires a collection of agent-based software services that will collaborate during tactical mission planning and execution

Monitoring morphisms to support sustainable interoperability of enterprise systems

Dissertation to obtain the Master degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer ScienceNowadays, organizations are required to be part of a global collaborative world. Sometimes this is the only way they can access new and wider markets, reaching new opportunities, skills and sharing assets, e.g. tools, lessons learnt. However, due to the different sources of enterprise models and semantics, organizations are experiencing difficulties in exchanging vital information via electronic and in a seamlessly way. To solve this issue, most of them try to attain interoperability by establishing peer-to-peer mappings with different business partners, or in optimized networks using neutral data standards to regulate communications. Moreover, the systems are more and more dynamic, changing frequently to answer new customer’s requirements, causing new interoperability problems and a reduction of efficiency. This dissertation proposes a multi-agent system to monitor existing enterprise systems, by being capable of detecting morphism changes. With this, network harmonization breakings are timely detected, and possible solutions are suggested to regain the interoperable status, thus enhancing robustness for reaching sustainability of business networks

A process-based control for evolvable production systems

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresNowadays, companies in a challenging environment are compelled to adapt to the rapid changes in the manufacturing business. The search for new processes to create products with short life-cycles at low cost, while keeping the same levels of productivity and quality is greater than ever. This has generated the need to create even more agile manufacturing systems, which could easily adapt to the market changes at a low cost. Advances in information technologies have allowed manufacturing systems to achieve new levels of agility, opening the doors to new approaches. These same advances helped companies in several sectors other than manufacturing to gain e ectiveness through the synchronization of the processes of their several departments by using Business Process Management tools. This thesis proposes a system that reacts and adapts itself to di erent production orders by means of recon guration. To reach this goal, the concept of Business Process Management was used. This concept, already used in many companies, allows them to model their inner behaviours with processes that can be changed according to their needs. A manufacturing system using this may become equally agile and alter its functioning in accordance with the needs of other departments of the same company. To create the system presented in this thesis it was used a multi-agent architecture based on process execution. Each agent contains a knowledge base, used by its processes,that stores internal or external information. This system may be used not only in the manufacturing shop oor, but also in any other areas within a company. This thesis also presents an application of the system to the shop oor, based on the Evolvable Production Systems concept, in which each agent represents a manufacturing resource that o ers a given set of services useful to the production process. The resources,by means of the agents, may aggregate among themselves to execute services together. Keywords: Manufacturing system, multi-agent system, ontology, process, BPM, EPS

Negotiation environment to support enterprise interoperability sustainability

Dissertation to obtain the Master degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer ScienceSpecialized and diversified global markets are facing a competitiveness that keeps pushing enterprises to abandon their traditional product centrism, where basically it is enough to concentrate their efforts in very narrow specialization fields and change their methods of work relying on networks of other providers that are able to fulfill their needs towards the development of complete solutions. These new methods of work, regarding the rapid change in markets and business organizations, requires new interoperability demands and complexity levels, from connection and syntax-oriented exchanges to semantic and model-oriented knowledge, which becomes very difficult for enterprises to cope with the pace of change. This dissertation proposes the implementation of a framework, based on agents and rules, to achieve solid and stable integration of solutions, via the use of a strong and formal negotiation mechanism, which will be the basis for increasing the enterprise interoperability in the supply chain for the development of solutions.European Commission through the funding of the FP7 ENSEMBLE, UNITE, MSEE and IMAGINE project

ADMI: A Multi-Agent Architecture To Autonomously Generate Data Mining Servrces.

This paper presents a case for an intelligent agent based framework for knowledge discovery in a distributed environment comprising multiple heterogeneous data repositories

Regionally distributed architecture for dynamic e-learning environment (RDADeLE)

e-Learning is becoming an influential role as an economic method and a flexible mode of study in the institutions of higher education today which has a presence in an increasing number of college and university courses. e-Learning as system of systems is a dynamic and scalable environment. Within this environment, e-learning is still searching for a permanent, comfortable and serviceable position that is to be controlled, managed, flexible, accessible and continually up-to-date with the wider university structure. As most academic and business institutions and training centres around the world have adopted the e-learning concept and technology in order to create, deliver and manage their learning materials through the web, it has become the focus of investigation. However, management, monitoring and collaboration between these institutions and centres are limited. Existing technologies such as grid, web services and agents are promising better results. In this research a new architecture has been developed and adopted to make the e-learning environment more dynamic and scalable by dividing it into regional data grids which are managed and monitored by agents. Multi-agent technology has been applied to integrate each regional data grid with others in order to produce an architecture which is more scalable, reliable, and efficient. The result we refer to as Regionally Distributed Architecture for Dynamic e-Learning Environment (RDADeLE). Our RDADeLE architecture is an agent-based grid environment which is composed of components such as learners, staff, nodes, regional grids, grid services and Learning Objects (LOs). These components are built and organised as a multi-agent system (MAS) using the Java Agent Development (JADE) platform. The main role of the agents in our architecture is to control and monitor grid components in order to build an adaptable, extensible, and flexible grid-based e-learning system. Two techniques have been developed and adopted in the architecture to build LOs' information and grid services. The first technique is the XML-based Registries Technique (XRT). In this technique LOs' information is built using XML registries to be discovered by the learners. The registries are written in Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) format. The second technique is the Registered-based Services Technique (RST). In this technique the services are grid services which are built using agents. The services are registered with the Directory Facilitator (DF) of a JADE platform in order to be discovered by all other components. All components of the RDADeLE system, including grid service, are built as a multi-agent system (MAS). Each regional grid in the first technique has only its own registry, whereas in the second technique the grid services of all regional grids have to be registered with the DF. We have evaluated the RDADeLE system guided by both techniques by building a simulation of the prototype. The prototype has a main interface which consists of the name of the system (RDADeLE) and a specification table which includes Number of Regional Grids, Number of Nodes, Maximum Number of Learners connected to each node, and Number of Grid Services to be filled by the administrator of the RDADeLE system in order to create the prototype. Using the RST technique shows that the RDADeLE system can be built with more regional grids with less memory consumption. Moreover, using the RST technique shows that more grid services can be registered in the RDADeLE system with a lower average search time and the search performance is increased compared with the XRT technique. Finally, using one or both techniques, the XRT or the RST, in the prototype does not affect the reliability of the RDADeLE system.Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu - Directorate General For Jubail Project Kingdom of Saudi Arabi