1. A process for operating autonomous, collaborative service-oriented automating devices (AG) of a production system at the manufacturing plant level as well as part of an IT company system with service-oriented architecture, whereby the automating devices (AG) are coupled to production devices as well as to each other and offer their functionalities and/or the functionalities of the coupled production devices as service or aggregation of services, and/or ask for services or aggregation of services from automating devices (AG) of the manufacturing plant and/or of the IT company system, whereby a setup of the automating devices (AG) is carried out comprising a configuration, definition of service and establishing of connections to other automating devices, whereby the behavior of the production system is based on the asynchronous exchange of events and the calling up of service with the goal of manufacturing a product according to a work plan, characterized in that the behavior of each automating device (AG) is represented by a part of a middleware envelope that is formally specified by HLPN (High Level Petri Net) models and is controlled by internal and/or external events and/or service call-ups, that an event received by an automating device (AG) is tested, whereby if the event corresponds to a description of a current status of the HLPN model the production system is transferred into a new status by updating the HLPN model as well as by synchronization of service activities, whereby if the event is an exception, an undocumented event or an internal conflict a decision is made in such a manner that an event is generated if necessary information for the solution of the decision is present, and/or that services of external components (DMS) and/or of automating devices (AG) are queried in order to make information for a concrete decision available, and that after execution of the event and/or querying of the services as well as development of the HLPN model the production system reaches a next status and is ready for receiving further events.