  Agent based distributed manufacturing control and scheduling systems are
subsets of new manufacturing systems. Multi agent systems (MAS) not only drive
design and engineering control solutions but also influence flexibility,
agility, and re-configurability, which makes MASs a better centralized systems
than its traditional counterparts. However, implementation of all MASs in the
real factories are timely, also extremely costly. A simulation environment that
would allow independent development and testing of the services and business
processes of the related manufacturing hardware is needed. This paper presents
the design and implementation of a userfriendly simulation platform for multi
agent based manufacturing control systems by considering the shop floor level.
The proposed simulation platform can simulate the software level of the factory
by considering the hardware level of the mentioned factory. An example of the
simulation platform is presented for a flexible manufacturing system, which is
located in EMU CIM lab.

Multiagent Systems