Adoption of an agent-based production planning technology in the manufacturing industry

This paper presents work carried out within the "ExPlanTech " project (IST - 1999-20171) funded by the European Commission Information Technologies Programme. The mission of the ExPlanTech is to introduce, customize and exploit a multi-agent production planning technology (ProPlanT multi-agent system research prototype) in two specific industrial enterprises. An agent driven service negotiations and decision process based on usage-centered knowledge about task requirements substitutes the traditional production planning activity. We introduce methodology for integration of the project-driven production planning based on agent-based engineering within the existing enterprise resource planning system. This novel production planning technology will facilitate optimization of resource utilization and supplier chain while meeting the customer demands