Presents a methodology developed by DaimlerChrysler. Illustrates the methodology through detailed case studies.

"IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Manufacturing Systems". -prel.

A three-volume work bringing together papers presented at 'SAFEPROCESS 2003', including four plenary papers on statistical, physical-model-based and logical-model-based approaches to fault detection and diagnosis, as well as 178 regular papers.

Low-volume high-variety products like personalized cars or customized engines will be the key issues for manufacturing in the 21st century. The necessary control technology is based on the concept of holons, which are the units of production and behave as autonomous and cooperative agents, providing flexibility, adaptability, agility, and dynamic reconfigurability. This book presents the latest research results in agent-based manufacturing as carried out by researchers in academia and industry within the international "Holonic Manufacturing Systems" project. As this project was driven by industry, the results presented here are of vital interest not just to researchers in agent technologies or distributed artificial intelligence, but also to engineers and professionals in industry who have to respond to rapid changes and new demands in production.

Agent Technology, or Agent-Based Approaches, is a new paradigm for developing software applications. It has been hailed as 'the next significant breakthrough in software development', and 'the new revolution in software' after object technology or object-oriented programming. In this context, an agent is a computer system which is capable of act