FOUNDATION FOR INTELLIGENT PHYSICAL AGENTS

 

 

                       Nina Berry                                                         Nenad Ivezic

             <nmberry@sandia.gov>                                       < nivezic@nist.gov >  

 

This work plan addresses the yearly activities of the product design & manufacturing working group.  Including their objectives and vision for how manufacturing applications can be used to test the application domain.

 

Problem Statement:

         FIPA has produced a collection of specifications that were initially developed around a set of application domains.  Now that several FIPA platforms have been release there is a need to extensively testing the FIPA specifications in other domains.  The large and encompassing manufacturing domain provides numerous possibilities for agent-based applications.  

 

Objective:

         The objective of this work is to promote and support the development of agent applications within the manufacturing domain.  The product design and manufacturing WG has members interested in the following domain areas including: workflow management, enterprise integration, supply chain management, information management, scheduling, e-commerce, and control of transportation (air traffic, car, etc.)

 

Technology:

         No new standards are being generated as part of this WG, we are only interested in promoting and evaluating manufacturing implementations that use FIPA technology.  We will however generate informative documents and register related items (content languages, interaction protocols, services, etc.).

        

         We will provide input to the working plans of other TCs with suggested modifications to their specifications when appropriate.

 

Specifications Generated:

         This WG will generate informative documents for the process of using FIPA platforms to generate applications for the manufacturing domain.  We envision creating the following documents this year:

v      FIPA manufacturing scenarios: This document will highlight 2-3 scenarios in the manufacturing domain that use agents within a FIPA platform.

v      Agents and manufacturing: This document will be a green/white paper that discusses the question of where and how agents can be applied to the manufacturing domain.

v      AUML and manufacturing: This document will cover issues uncovered during the evaluation of AUML for describing agent-manufacturing systems.

 

Plan for Work:

         The PD&M WG will use the following method of working:

            Regular meeting will correlate with the FIPA meetings:

v      Providing the chair or appointed temporary chair can attend the meetings.

Interim meetings will be used to supplement the regular meeting schedule of FIPA to accommodate the meeting schedule of the PD&M WG.  Current interim meetings are set for the following time frames:

v      2000/09/07 London, UK

v      2000/09/?? Burlingame, CA

Pursue working relationships with other manufacturing groups:

Holonic manufacturing consortium

v      Hold interim meeting with them, to help them migrate their ideas into an agent system using a FIPA platform

v      Use reflector to discuss the issues and concerns they have for using FIPA technology

                        OMG Manufacturing task force

v      Attend joint meeting with them in Sept 2000 to talk about the PDM.

                        AAAI Manufacturing SIG

v      Determine the next USA meet and propose a joint meeting possible workshop in this area.

 

Milestones:     

The PD&M WG will work on the following items this year:

v      Sponsor two interim meetings with the HMC in London on to discuss future potential liaison activities with the software side of the consortium. 2000/09

v      The PD&M WG will be having an interim meeting in Sept. in conjunction with the OMG Agent group.  2000/09

v      The PD&M WG will release an informative document of manufacturing scenarios on the usage of FIPA technology for these applications. 2000/10

v       Pursue potential liaison relationship with the holonic-manufacturing consortium HMC.  This milestone will be reassessed after the Sept meeting 2000/10.

v      The PD&M WG will investigate and develop an initial informative document of how AUML can be used as a modeling technique for designing agent-based manufacturing applications. 2001/07

v      Produce a white paper on the usage of agents in the manufacturing domain. 2001/01

 

Future Work:

         The PD&M WG would like to encourage its members to write joint proposals to fund a larger project in the manufacturing domain.

 

Dependencies:

         At this time we do not plan on directly impacting any known specification, but potential impact by future application development could provide feedback to the following specifications.

            [FIPA00006] FIPA ontology services specification

            [FIPAacl] FIPA ACL specification

            [FIPA00007] FIPA content language specification

 

Support:

Francios Arlabosse

Nina Berry (Sandia National Labs)

Nenad Ivenic (National Institute of Standards)

Jim Odell (Odell Associates)

John Shepherdson (BT)

Potential Participants
Jim Christensen (Rockwell International)

         David Flater (NIST)

         Evan Wallace (NIST)

         Goutam Satapathy (Intelligent Automation Inc)

         Renato Levy (Intelligent Automation Inc)

         Brent Langley (CMU)

         Don Sweetall (HCFA)

         David Levine (IBM)

 

FIPA Architecture Board response:

This work plan has been approved and has been assigned to the Product Design and Manufacturing Working Group.