The case for hierarchy-mobile agents in industrial informatics

Industrial informatics (II) is increasingly becoming a competitive factor in many industrial segments. Based on key enabling technologies such as high-speed networks, mobile agents and the object oriented development paradigm, II acts vertically at all levels of the production process, ranging from resource management down to sensor integration. Though the role of information technology is continuously increasing, many observers note that this technology is adding incrementally value to existing industrial architectures and as yet, few groundbreaking running commercial solutions in plant automation or manufacturing are available. The reason may not be related that much to the information technology as such, but to the nature of this market. In this paper, we make the case for solutions that act as a bridge between the currently available industrial architectures and the more flexible and innovative solutions of the future. Hierarchy-mobile agents are proposed as a technology that can bring new solutions faster into real-world applications