No abstract

Flexibility will be one of the key features in future manufacturing systems because the environments that surround manufacturing systems are rapidly changing from day to day. To satisfy this requirement, the hierarchical systems used in previous manufacturing systems are not enough because they cannot deal effectively with unexpected situations. Moreover, a lot of software modules have to be modified when a system is rebuilt to meet new requirements. To achieve flexibility in manufacturing systems, the concept of an autonomous decentralized system is useful. We introduce some agents that work autonomously in the system to build autonomous decentralized manufacturing systems.