TQC is a special purpose machinery builder. We became aware of the Industry 4.0 concepts and decided to investigate whether we were already prepared for what has been termed the fourth industrial revolution, or whether there were new concepts and practices that our company should adopt.This paper shows the process through which we evaluated the aspects related to the Industry 4.0 definitions. We dissected the various core concepts and then expanded the process to cover the nine pillars on which Industry 4.0 is built. We assessed ourselves against each significant element to see if we understood the concepts and requirements. We asked if these aspects were relevant to our business, we assessed whether our experience and actions to date covered the core of each element. We also looked at the challenges Industry 4.0 poses for the future of our business. This paper is a review of the process and it presents our findings.

The manufacturing of customised products is a driver in the trend of incorporating intelligence in the system. This intelligence is required to enable the system to self-configure processes to meet the requirements of unique products. This work deals with the quality testing phase in a production system. A method of controlling testing functionality for leak test process is presented utilising a multi-agent approach. A means of controlling agent execution by expressions is discussed. Two types of expressions; operational and conditional expressions are conceptualised. An experimental use case is demonstrated to validate the approach.

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The advent of Industry 4.0 and the development of future industrial applications can be achieved using Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). This technological development invokes high levels of communication and computation in the form of an interconnected network of industrial resources. Multi-agent systems precisely can empower such technological evolution by introducing properties like decentralisation, autonomy, flexibility, social ability and modularity to the industrial context. In this regard, the current work surveys recent multi-agent based manufacturing approaches and provides a general vision of current trends focusing on frameworks/architectures, complementary technologies and common applications. This article, ends with an integrated discussion of emerging agent-based industrial challenges, a general conclusion and final remarks.