Flavors Technology Incorporated

Slide 7 of 24

Development of PIM and Paracell were driven by several issues.

More and more of the world is running on software, and the development of this software is expensive. Beyond development, there is maintenance and enhancement that must be undertaken to remain competitive. One auto industry manufacturing executive estimates that 40% of every new or retrofit plant is software.

As more and more software is developed and installed, our systems become increasingly complex. Using an agent approach, we believe that systems can be simple, yet exhibit complex behavior. This belief is drawn from work being done in the field of chaos and complexity. Consider a honey bee, where each individual bee, or agent, carries very simple rules. However, when all of these agents interact, they form a higher intelligence known as the hive. The hive exhibits division of labor, social structure, even a production system - all unknown to any individual bee.

There is a need for domain experts to become involved in developing solutions. Flavors' products are designed to be used by those without a programming background. Our initial application at GM was developed by a process engineer and maintained by a union electrician.

The host for an agent system must be on-line, available, and agile. Impeding your agents with the architecture of your execution platform is an unacceptable trade-off.