What programming philsophy is this

Hello,

I am currently working on a project at work that involves packages being sent around a plant on conveyor belts. Each conveyor belt is broken up into a number of individual positions. Each position has a number of state machines associated with it. I.E a package arrives at that position, depending on the properties of the package the position executes the appropriate state machine that will see the package directed in the correct direction. I.e The position may initiate a pusher that drives the package onto another conveyor belt.

Basically there is not one overall program that controls the entire sequence of the plant, there is but a heap of small programs that control the plant.

What is the name for this programming philosophy?

Thank you

I won't call it a philosophy. It's a distributed control system, appropriate for a some processes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_control_system

Some points are unclear in your description, e.g. do you consider communication channels between adjacent controllers, or is all necessary information carried by the packages itself?