Empowering Agents with Empathy - a Conceptual Framework for Enhancing Agent-Based Self-Organizing Production

This paper introduces a conceptual framework for empathy-inspired self-organizing production systems to address the increasing complexity in manufacturing under VUCA and BANI conditions. By integrating the bio-inspired mechanism of empathy, the framework enhances adaptive capabilities of multiagent systems, enabling agents to handle incomplete data, align local decisions with global objectives, and foster cooperative behavior. The 3E principle-empathetic perception, reasoning, and decision-makingis operationalized for enhancing agent properties. This approach aims to overcome current challenges in self-organizing production, providing a foundation for future innovations in resilient, efficient, and adaptive manufacturing systems while bridging the gap between theory and industrial application.