Research on Technology of Multi-Agent Intelligent Process Planning Based on Bid/Mediator Mechanism

Nowadays, a number of intelligent process planning systems based on the technology of expert system cannot be effectively applied to industrial enterprises in practice because of lacking of flexibility, efficiency, scalability and integrating with PPC (Production Planning and Control) effectively. To overcome these weaknesses, a framework of applying software agent to intelligent process planning system is described in this paper. A prototype system – AIPPS (Agent-Based Intelligent Process Planning System) were developed. The involved agents are defined, and their roles in the architecture and the knowledge that each agent would need are described. In addition, the system architecture, cooperative mechanism, and the structure of the agents are discussed in this paper.