ABSTRACT
Having reached the conclusion of the book, we hope that the reader and the PS-Bikes staff will feel acquainted with the current state of the art of agent-based manufacturing and the related practical possibilities to enhance the agility of manufacturing companies in order to achieve peak performance. On the other hand, it should be evident that manufacturing “agentification” is still far from being “the” approach. For example, Chapter 3 and Chapter 6 highlighted the gap still separating conventional and agent-based planning, scheduling, and control techniques. It follows that the reader and PS-Bikes staff should welcome — as a conclusion to this book — greater insight into the current research trends in this field and into what should be expected in the next few years. This text is not meant to serve as an oracle of agent-based manufacturing’s imminent future; however, this closing chapter will describe these issues, endeavoring to highlight what has yet to be done or otherwise refined in the field. Here, academic researchers should be able to find important indications about the most promising, but not fully explored, trends in agent-based research applied to the manufacturing world.
