A large number of real and abstract systems involve the transformation of some basic resource into respective products under the action of multiple processing agents, which can be understood as multiple-agent production systems (MAP). At each discrete time instant, for each agent, a fraction of the resources is assumed to be kept, forwarded to other agents, or converted into work with some efficiency. The present work describes a systematic study of nine basic MAP architectures subdivided into two main groups, namely parallel and sequential distribution of resources from a single respective source. Several types of interconnections among the involved processing agents are also considered. The resulting MAP architectures are studied in terms of the total amount of work, the dispersion of the resources (states) among the agents, and the transition times from the start of operation until the respective steady state. Several interesting results are obtained and discussed, including the observation that some of the parallel designs were able to yield maximum work and minimum state dispersion, achieved at the expense of the transition time and use of several interconnections between the source and the agents. The results obtained for the sequential designs indicate that relatively high performance can be obtained for some specific cases.

翻译：大量真实与抽象系统涉及在多个处理代理作用下将某些基础资源转化为相应产品，这可以理解为多代理生产系统（MAP）。在每个离散时间瞬间，每个代理假设将一部分资源保留、转发给其他代理，或以一定效率转化为功。本文系统研究了九种基本MAP架构，分为两大组：来自单一各自资源的并行与顺序资源分配。同时考虑了所涉及处理代理之间的多种互联方式。从总功量、资源（状态）在代理间的分散度以及从运行开始到各自稳态的过渡时间等方面，对由此产生的MAP架构进行了研究。获得并讨论了若干有趣结果，包括观察到某些并行设计能够产生最大功和最小状态分散，但这是以过渡时间和源与代理之间使用多种互联为代价的。顺序设计的结果表明，在特定情况下可获得相对较高的性能。