The AARIA agent architecture: From manufacturing requirements to agent-based system design

Designs for real-world agent-based systems must reflect both domain require ments and technical capabilities. This paper illustrates some of the requir ements for agents in manufacturing scheduling and shows how they lead to an architecture that addresses them, in the context of AARIA (Autonomous Agen ts for Rock Island Arsenal), an industrial-strength agent-based shop-floor control and scheduling architecture. A review of other agent-based manufact uring systems illustrates how the design choices made in such systems refle ct the requirements anticipated by the authors.