Agent interaction takes place at several levels. Current work in the ARPA Knowledge Sharing Effort has addressed the information content level by the KIF language and the intentional level by the KQML language. In this paper we address the coordination level by means of our Coordination Language (COOL) that relies on speech act based communication, but integrates it in a structured conversation framework that captures the coordination mechanisms agents use when working together. We are currently using this language (i) to represent coordination mechanisms for the supply chain of manufacturing enterprises modeled as intelligent agents and (ii) as an environment for designing and validating coordination protocols for multi-agent systems. This paper describes the basic elements of this language: conversation objects, conversation rules, error recovery rules, continuation rules, conversation nesting. The actual COOL source code and a running trace for the n-queens problem are presented in ...

Global competition and rapidly changing customer requirements are forcing major changes in the production styles and configuration of manufacturing organizations. Traditional centralised manufacturing systems are not able to meet such requirements. This paper proposes an agent-based approach for dynamically creating and managing agent communities in such widely distributed and ever-changing manufacturing environments. After reviewing the research literature, an adaptive multi-agent manufacturing system architecture called MetaMorph is presented and its main features are described. Such architecture facilitates multi-agent coordination by minimising communication and processing overheads. Adaptation is facilitated through organizational structural change and two learning mechanisms: learning from past experiences and learning future agent interactions by simulating future dynamic, emergent behaviours. The MetaMorph architecture also addresses other specific requirements for next generat...

We present a logical framework for representing the agents in two different cooperating information systems. We define an architecture for Integrated Supply Chain Management in which the supply chain is managed by a set of intelligent agents responsible for one or more activities. We also define an architecture for an enterprise engineering system that allows the exploration of a variety of enterprise designs. We introduce the notion of an advisor as a formalization of the different perspectives that we have with respect to an enterprise. By representing activities in both architectures as sets of first-order axioms in a microtheory, the tasks for the different agents in the architecture can be represented as finding satisfying interpretations of the constraints.

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this paper we focus on the solutions we are providing for the outer layer of the architecture. They are embedded into a domain independent COOrdination Lan3 guage (COOL) that provides services for defining distributed agent configurations, managing communication, defining and managing structured interactions amongst agents, external software integration and in context acquisition and debugging of coordination knowledge. As these solutions impact on the way agents manage change by information distribution and conflict resolution, we also address these aspects showing how the coordination service supports these tasks. The paper is structured as follows. In section 2 we review the work in Distributed Artificial Intelligence from several perspectives and define our research goals. As the subsequent presentation of our tools is carried out in the context of our main application, the agent-based integration of the supply chain of manufacturing enterprises, we continue in section 3 with presenting this application domain. Section 4 deals with the main subject of the paper, the components of the coordination language. We illustrate the language throughout with examples from the supply chain. Section 5 then deals with the coordination knowledge acquisition service that allows users to extend and debug coordination knowledge on-line. To show how the coordination system is integrated with other reasoning tasks in the Agent Building Shell, in section 6 we review two other services of the architecture that make use of the coordination framework, cooperative information distribution and cooperative conflict management. In the end, we discuss some related approaches and provide concluding remarks.

Manufacturing enterprises are now moving towards open architectures for integrating their activities with those of their suppliers, customers and partners within wide supply chain networks. Agent-based technology provides a natural way to design and implement such environments. This paper presents an agent-based manufacturing enterprise infrastructure. After a brief review of recent advancements in this domain, we describe the main features of the proposed infrastructure and the functions of its components. A machine-centered dynamic scheduling/rescheduling mechanism is then detailed and a prototype implementation is presented.

Manufacturing enterprises are now moving towards open architectures for integrating their activities with those of their suppliers and customers within wide supply chain networks. Traditional knowledge engineering approaches with large scale or very large scale knowledge bases are not suited for such widely distributed systems. Agent-based technology provides a natural way for resolving this problem. This paper presents a hybrid agent-oriented infrastructure for modeling manufacturing enterprises so as to integrate design, planning, scheduling, simulation, execution, material supply, and marketing services into a distributed intelligent open environment. In this paper, we discuss the requirements for next generation of manufacturing enterprises, and describe the main features of the proposed general infrastructure and the functions of its components. A machine-centered dynamic scheduling and rescheduling mechanism is then detailed and a prototype implementation is presented. Keywords:...

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Improving supply chain management is very important for increasing competitive position and profitability. Manufacturing enterprises are now moving towards open architectures for integrating their activities with those of their suppliers, customers and partners within wide supply chain networks. This paper presents an agentbased approach for manufacturing enterprise integration and supply chain management to meet such requirements. A hybrid agent-based architecture is proposed, the main features of such an architecture are then described, and a prototype implementation is presented. Keywords Enterprise integration, distributed manufacturing systems, supply chain management, agent, multi-agent systems, mediator 1 INTRODUCTION Manufacturing enterprises are confronted with growing competition, the evolution of new markets and increasingly complex global political and economic scenarios. The need for cheaper and more cost-effective products is evident. Improving supply chain management...

We introduce the Information Agent as a component of the information infrastructure supporting collaborative knowledge-based computing environments. The Information Agent takes over the substantial amount of work required to carry out active communication with other agents, to seek for information, to convert, translate or enhance the information, to coordinate message exchange and the information distribution process. We discuss the functions of the Information Agent, describe an architecture based on several layers of languages and services and present our choices for these components. We show how the architecture can be designed and implemented using description logic representation systems and argue for the advantages of this approach. Then we show how services supporting content-based information distribution, temporal reasoning, organization modeling, cooperation modeling and conflict resolution have been introduced and how all of these support the functions of the Information Ag...