Abstract
Service-oriented Multi-Agent Systems (SoMAS) is art approach to combine the fundamental characteristics of service-oriented and multi-agent methods into a new platform for industrial automation. Several research works already targeted the connection of these technologies, presenting different perspectives in how and why to join them. This research focuses on available efforts and solutions in the area of SoMAS and explains the idea behind the service-oriented agents in industrial automation. A SoMAS system is mainly composed by shared resources in form of services and their providing/requesting agents. The paper also discusses the required engineering aspects of these systems, from the internal anatomy to the interaction patterns. Parameters of flexibility, reconfiguration, autonomy and reduced development efforts were considered and they should be the trademark of SoMAS. Aiming to illustrate the proposed approach, an example of service-oriented automation agents is given.

Abstract
Although ontology has gained wide attention in the area of information systems, a criticism typical of the early days is still rehearsed here and there. Roughly, this criticism says: general ontologies are not suited for real applications. We believe this is the result of a misunderstanding of the role of general ontologies since, we claim, even foundational ontologies (the most general and formal ontologies) have a crucial role in building reusable, adaptable and transparent application systems. We support this view by showing how foundational ontologies can be used in the manufacturing control area. Our approach (partially presented here through an example) provides a domain-specific ontology which is explicitly designed for applications, theoretically organized by a foundational ontology, driven by the application field for all intents and purposes, suitable for communication across different applications.

Abstract
An Electronic Institution is a computational framework that provides a set of services supporting the lifecycle of Virtual Organizations. In a virtual organization, different business partners cooperate in order to achieve a common goal (the established contract), being the coordination of the corresponding inter-organizational workflow an important issue. This paper describes an inter-organizational workflow management architecture, based in multi-agent systems principles, aiming to orchestrate the contract execution and to obtain feedback from the shop floor level. Aiming to validate its correctness and applicability, a special focus is devoted to its implementation, using the JADE agent development framework, and its operation under different scenarios.

Abstract

Abstract
This paper introduces a novel approach to the real-time decision-making in service-oriented manufacturing systems, addressing the myopia problem usually presented in such systems. The proposed decision method considers the knowledge extracted from the Petri nets models used to describe the services process behavior, mainly the T-invariants, combined with a multi-criteria function customized according to the system's particularities and strategies. An experimental laboratorial case study was used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed real-time decision-making approach in service-oriented manufacturing systems, considering some productivity and energy efficiency criteria.

Abstract
In the recent evolution of production control systems, the emergence of decentralized systems capable of dealing with the rapid changes in the production environment better than the traditional centralized architectures has been one of the most significant developments. The agent-based and holonic paradigms symbolize this approach, and ADACOR holonic control architecture is a successful example of such a system. In this paper, authors discusses the current challenges and the way to go in the direction of new, reconfigurable, evolvable and ubiquitous systems, able to respond to current production environment demands and variability. © 2007 IFAC.