A service based multi-agent system design tool for modelling integrated manufacturing and service systems

Intelligent software agent technology has wide ranging applications in automating processes that require learning and decision making. It has been demonstrated that multi-agent systems can serve the needs of a real-time distributed manufacturing environment [6]. It would be most rewarding if an integrated manufacturing and service system (IMSS) could be easily and efficiently modeled by a multi-agent system. However, although there are well established methodologies to model agent mental states, there is an absence of effective tools to convert the design into implementation. This paper proposes a service based agent system modelling and design tool - the Goal Net Designer, to bridge the gap between modeling a multi-agent system and automatically implementing the design to serve the purpose of an IMSS.