Order Co-ordination in Manufacturing Networks Through a Multi-agent-System

Enterprises co-operate with one another and form manufacturing networks in order to benefit from market potentials which they could otherwise not reach on their own. The operation of manufacturing networks, however, is not supported properly by existing production planning and control (PPC) systems. These systems allow neither communication with systems of other enterprises, nor the synchronisation of master production schedules in manufacturing networks. This paper proposes an order co-ordination method based on automatic negotiations in a Multi-Agent-System. This system allows the inclusion and scheduling of orders in real time within manufacturing networks in the semiconductor industry and, at the same time, co-ordinates the individual master production schedules (MPS) with one another.