  Agent-technologies have been used for higher-level decision making in
addition to carrying out lower-level automation and control functions in
industrial systems. Recent research has identified a number of architectural
patterns for the use of agents in industrial automation systems but these
practices vary in several ways, including how closely agents are coupled with
physical systems and their control functions. Such practices may play a pivotal
role in the Cyber-Physical System integration and interaction. Hence, there is
a clear need for a common set of criteria for assessing available practices and
identifying a best-fit practice for a given industrial use case. Unfortunately,
no such common criteria exist currently. This work proposes an assessment
criteria approach as well as a methodology to enable the use case based
selection of a best practice for integrating agents and industrial systems. The
software product quality model proposed by the ISO/IEC 25010 family of
standards is used as starting point and is put in the industrial automation
context. Subsequently, the proposed methodology is applied, and a survey of
experts in the domain is carried out, in order to reveal some insights on the
key characteristics of the subject matter.
