The increasing complexity of manufacturing systems as well as the overall demands for flexible and fault-tolerant control of production processes stimulates (among many others) two key emerging technologies that are already making an important breakthrough in the field of intelligent manufacturing, control, and diagnostics. These two paradigms are: - the holonic approach based on the event-driven control strategy, usually aimed at modular control systems that are directly physically linked with the manufacturing hardware equipment, and - the multi-agent approach developed in the area of...