Weaving an agent-based Semantic Grid for distributed collaborative manufacturing

The development and maintenance of distributed collaborative manufacturing systems is faced with increasing challenges caused by the technical difficulties and ontological issues in distributed computing, resource integration and knowledge sharing over heterogeneous computing platforms. This paper presents an agent-based Semantic Grid for distributed manufacturing collaboration across ubiquitous virtual enterprises. A hierarchy of autonomous, adaptive agents forming a 'super peer' based peer-to-peer network is laid out in the Semantic Grid to provide, in an open, dynamic, loosely coupled and scalable manner, the service publication, discovery and reuse for management of applications that need to utilise Grid resources. The operation and experimental evaluation of the system are presented to validate the implementation of the proposed approach.