  Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are adopted and tested with many complex and
critical industrial applications, which are required to be adaptive, scalable,
context-aware, and include real-time constraints. Industrial Control Networks
(ICN) are examples of these applications. An ICN is considered a system that
contains a variety of interconnected industrial equipments, such as physical
control processes, control systems, computers, and communication networks. It
is built to supervise and control industrial processes. This paper presents a
development case study on building a multi-layered agent-based ICN in which
agents cooperate to provide an effective supervision and control of a set of
control processes, basically controlled by a set of legacy control systems with
limited computing capabilities. The proposed ICN is designed to add an
intelligent layer on top of legacy control systems to compensate their limited
capabilities using a cost-effective agent-based approach, and also to provide
global synchronization and safety plans. It is tested and evaluated within a
simulation environment. The main conclusion of this research is that agents and
MAS can provide an effective, flexible, and cost-effective solution to handle
the emerged limitations of legacy control systems if they are properly
integrated with these systems.
