Patent US 6,091,998

An industrial control system associates an autonomous control unit with each piece of equipment in an industrial process, the autonomous control units having a model of the equipment's operation and data indicating constraints on the equipment's operation. A product to be produced is abstracted as a set of machine independent steps and performance of these steps bid upon by the autonomous control units according constraints models and internal goals. Bids having conflicting requirements may generate counterbids until a completed plan for the production of the product is generated.