Today's automotive plants are equipped with heterogeneous software systems for different types of tasks, both factory planning and manufacturing operations. IT systems used for factory planning are summarized as `digital factory tools'. On the operating level, software systems are not yet integrated and thus support separate tasks such as production order control, production monitoring, sequence planning, vehicle identification, quality management, maintenance management, material control and others. A very promising technology for integrating existing software systems and their functionalities and to add assistant systems for the shop floor staff is to be found in software agents. In this paper the author describes the current use of software agents for today's production tasks and his vision for applying agent technology in future automotive production.