An assessment of the potentials and challenges in future approaches for automation software

Modern trends in manufacturing are defined by mass customization and a changing product portfolio during the life cycle of a manufacturing system. Consequently, to support flexibility, many research projects focus on promising novel paradigms for production automation software. During the research project KREAagentuse, guided interviews with industrial experts from machine and plant automation companies were conducted to assess the potentials and challenges of software agent technology and applications. This chapter comprises the results of these guided interviews and briefly discusses research works related to the requirements resulting from the interviews. These works comprise an approach for enhancing a soft sensor and diagnosis concept for manufacturing systems, a concept for the model-based development of software agents and soft sensors for Plus, and the automatic model-based synthesis of manufacturing automation software and failure compensation strategies.