In the scope of Industry 4.0, flexible manufacturing systems, including their internal Material Flow Systems (MFSs), are required. One approach to design MFSs in a reconfigurable manner is the use of a modularized and decentralized control architecture based on software agents. For this purpose, the MFS hardware is divided into so-called Material Flow Modules (MFMs), each being controlled by a dedicated software agent. To achieve the desired material flow in a MFS by means of an agent-based control, handover processes between different MFMs have to be considered in detail. This requires the correct identification of connections between neighboring MFMs and the analysis, whether the respective MFMs are able to coordinate a handover depending on their abilities. This paper presents a concept for considering different handover abilities of MFMs and their significance for deriving a MFS's current topology as well as the actuator control during the handover process through MFM agents.     «

In the scope of Industry 4.0, flexible manufacturing systems, including their internal Material Flow Systems (MFSs), are required. One approach to design MFSs in a reconfigurable manner is the use of a modularized and decentralized control architecture based on software agents. For this purpose, the MFS hardware is divided into so-called Material Flow Modules (MFMs), each being controlled by a dedicated software agent. To achieve the desired material flow in a MFS by means of an agent-based cont...     »