Supporting runtime decision making in the production automation domain using design time engineering knowledge

Abstract

Complex production automation systems are often represented as multi-agent systems which need to be reconfigured correctly and efficiently to adapt to new requirements. While the system knowledge is available at design time in form of workshop layouts, product trees or production strategies, at run-time this knowledge is often not available and therefore not used at all for operational decision making. In this paper we describe an engineering ontology used for the representation of design time engineering knowledge for supporting run-time decisions. We evaluate the proposed approach using three scenarios from the production automation domain. Major result was that the explicitly available design time knowledge can provide valuable input to runtime decisions.