"This monograph coherently presents a series of research results on concurrent production systems recently contributed by the author and several co-authors. Before going into the details of concurrent production systems the performance of a single system is discussed. Based on these considerations it is explained how to estimate the efficiency of production systems programs and how to automatically determine efficient join structures. Parallel systems, including algorithms for parallel rule firings, distributed systems under distributed control, and particularly multiagent production systems and the related control issues are investigated. Finally a meta-level control architecture is applied to the construction of the multiagent system CoCo for public telecommunication network control."--PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE.