Multi-Agent based production planning and control is an interdisciplinary topic involving artificial intelligence, manufacturing engineering, operational research and industrial engineering & management which aims to support real time production data tracking and tracing and intelligent production management. Looking to the future, production management is changing to Service-as-a-Software mode under the development of Artificial Intelligence technologies, hence the interests and needs of intelligent production planning and controlling will continue to grow. This book provides Multi-Agent based methods and technologies for today’s competitive manufacturing environment. Methods and technologies are discussed based on the
Job Shop Manufacturing and Re-entrant Manufacturing processes. It looks at the following areas: Multi-Agent based hybrid push-pull production planning and controlling system structure / push production planning for distributed manufacturing systems / push-pull scheduling for Job Shop manufacturing systems / push-pull scheduling for Re-entrant manufacturing systems / pull production controlling / material data acquisition with RFID / data acquisition with OPC / production planning and controlling prototype systems. It highlights the advanced research works in the field of industrial engineering and management, such as numerical optimization methods and wireless sensor networks. All these will contribute to the advancement of understanding how the intelligent production planning and control system works.