An open architecture for holonic cooperation and autonomy

As the existing control architectures for FMS have many problems with respect to flexibility, re-configuration and software development, which become worse as the system size increases, the international IMS research programme proposed a new manufacturing philosophy called the Holonic Manufacturing System (HMS). Under the notion of HMS, manufacturing systems are built from a modular mix of standardised, autonomous and co-operative agents called holons. Inspired by such emerging concept, we carried out this research with the aim of devising a holonic control framework, which is suitable for future FMS shop floor scheduling and control. This paper addresses the design of the proposed framework as well as the underlying holonic philosophy. In order to verify the applicability of the framework, an experimental simulation system has been developed on a real-time and distributed computer platform. The system consists of a set of holon prototypes capable of performing real-time scheduling for both manufacturing and transportation tasks, and a collection of interacting software modules that assist the simulation running on these prototypes. Experimental results acquired from the simulation have demonstrated that the framework is extensible and re-configurable. Implementation of the simulation system also provides direction and a workable foundation for further research and development on HMS.

The Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMS) Project is an international industrially driven project addressing systemization and standardization, research, pre-competitive development, deployment and support of architectures and technologies for open, distributed, intelligent, autonomous and co-operating systems on a global basis. During its ten-year program, the HMS Project has developed specifications of holonic architectures, a computer-aided environment for the encapsulation, reuse and integration of holonic systems technologies, and libraries of demonstrated, reusable technologies and tools for the construction of holonic manufacturing systems. These next-generation holonic systems are providing the flexibility, agility and robustness necessary for the rapid delivery of custom manufactured products in competitive global markets. By building on the results of Phase 1 of the HMS Project that emphasized the development of generic technologies and their demonstration in specific application areas, Phase 2 will achieve their integration and application at three levels of the manufacturing and supply chain enterprise: Holonic Control Devices, consisting of the technical manufacturing equipment; Holonic Production Sites and Physical Equipment, comprising the manufacturing work cells; Holonic Planning and Execution Systems, providing scheduling and control of the holonic manufacturing system and a virtual test bed environment for holonic system implementations; and Holonic Man-Machine and Emulation Systems, a virtual test-bed environment for holonic system implementations.

This paper deals with a real-time scheduling system of HMSs (Holonic Manufacturing Systems). A scheduling process based on the utility values have been proposed and applied to the realtime scheduling problems of the HMSs in the previous report. It was shown that the proposed methods generate suitable schedules from the view point of the objective functions of the individual holons in the HMSs. A new real-time scheduling method is proposed, in the paper, to consider both the objective functions of the individual holons and the whole HMSs. In this method, all the pareto optimal combinations of the resource holons and the job holons are generated based on the objective function values of the individual holons. Following this, a most suitable combination is selected from the pareto optimal ones, based on the objective functions of the whole HMSs, such as total make span and total tardiness. It is shown, through case studies, that the proposed method is effective to improve the production schedules from the viewpoint of the objective functions of the whole HMSs in comparison with the previous method.

Implementation of Eye-Tracking Technology in Holonic Manufacturing Systems

Engineering Holonic Manufacturing Systems

Real time control of holonic manufacturing systems requires a radically different approach from that of traditional unit level regulatory control. Because they need to automatically adapt and reconfigure based on the ever changing requirements of the manufacturing system, control systems based on this approach are termed metamorphic control systems. The engineering of such software centric metamorphic control systems for dynamically reconfigurable distributed multi sensor based holonic systems is addressed. An integrated and uniform event driven control architecture is specified for various functional levels of metamorphic control system. This architecture utilizes the emerging International Electrotechnical Commission function block standard (IEC 1499) for industrial process measurement and control systems to specify the requisite behavior of distributed control software components (agents).

This work shows how to develop a methodology to support and integrate the concepts and projects of the Holonic Manufacturing System (HMS) with the other areas of the organization for full organizational management success, being a new entrepreneurial management, with support of this new technology in the reduction of costs and increased value added. HMS is in the process of being developed in the so-called "Consortium of the Rich Countries for the 21st Century", which involves governments, companies and universities from the first world countries, developing technology and knowledge related to the Holonic Manufacturing System (HMS). This new concept, under development by the above consortium, will allow the countries that hold this advancement to overcome the challenges of the globalized market and gain even more international competitiveness.

In this chapter, desirable features of Holonic Manufacturing System (HMS) development and implementation environments are extracted, and HMS-Shell and JDPS are explained, as examples that provide these features. HMS-Shell is a GUI-based design tool for HMSs based on the Cooperation Domain (CD) that encapsulates cooperation partners and cooperation protocols. JDPS is a HMS implementation and execution environment based on reliable broadcast messaging that achieves complete location and multiplication transparency of entities. These features of HMS-Shell and JDPS make application programs independent of cooperation mechanisms, and enable easy dynamic reconfiguration and incremental development of HMSs while systems are in operation.

The field of holonic manufacturing was initiated in the early 1990s to address the upcoming challenges for manufacturing operations in the 21st century. It is intended to support highly responsive organizations by providing a modular building block or 'plug and play' capability for developing and operating a manufacturing production system. The holonic approach can be viewed as an alternative to more hierarchical operations management methods such as those based on computer- integrated manufacturing (CIM). Since 1990, an increasing amount of research has been conducted in holonic manufacturing over a diverse range of industries and applications, with a strong emphasis on how holonic systems will perform the different planning and control functions required to manage a production operation. The planning and control work to date has, however, been focussed on specific problem formulations and solution strategies. The intention of this paper is to provide an overview of the use of holonic manufacturing concepts in production planning and control which is accessible to both practitioners and researchers in the area. The aims of the paper are as follows. To define clearly what is meant by a holonic manufacturing system and to demonstrate the relevance of its development to production planning and control. To motivate holonic manufacturing based on a business rationale, demonstrating specifically how it can support improved responsiveness and the management of production complexity. To review existing work in holonic manufacturing systems relevant to production planning and control, and provide an analysis of the scope and applicability of these results.

IMS Test Case 5: Holonic Manufacturing Systems

This paper surveys the activities and results of the IMS test case entitled “Holonic Manufacturing Systems”. This one-year project covers a wide range of manufacturing systems, encompassing discrete, continuous, and/or batch processing. It puts forwa

The objective of the research described is to develop an integrated process planning and scheduling system of machine products, aiming at realizing flexible production control in holonic manufacturing systems. The basic architecture of the holonic manufacturing system is discussed from the viewpoint of the integration of the process planning and the scheduling systems. Procedures are proposed to select suitable machining sequences of machining features and suitable sequences of machining equipment, taking into consideration future schedules of machining equipment. A combined method of genetic algorithm and dynamic programming is applied to selection of the machining sequence and the sequence of the machining equipment.

Holonic manufacturing scheduling: architecture, cooperation mechanism, and implementation

In this paper, dynamic re-configuration and task optimization of holonic manufacturing system (HMS) model is put forward. The concept of dynamic virtual clustering is extended to the control process of a holarchy or holonic organization. A task-oriented clustering mechanism and a corresponding optimization algorithm are presented as an efficient approach to the holonic control in HMS domain. A hybrid algorithm based on PSO for holon task allocation is described to support the optimum organization of a holarchy. Convergence property of PSO is analyzed to guide the parameter selection of it. The simulation results show that the proposed model and algorithm are effective

The design and development of holonic manufacturing systems requires careful, and sometimes risky, decision making to ensure that they will successfully satisfy the demands of an ever-changing market. In this paper, the authors propose a methodology for a holonic manufacturing systems requirement analysis that is based on a virtual reality approach and aimed at assisting designers of such systems along the entire systems design and development process. Exploiting virtual reality helps the user collect valid information quickly and in a correct form by putting the user and the information support elements in direct relation with the operation of the system in a more realistic environment. A prototype software system tool is designed to realise the features outlined in each phase of the methodology. A virtual manufacturing environment for matching the physical and the information model domains is utilised to delineate the information system requirements of holonic manufacturing systems implementation. A set of rules and a knowledge base is appended to the virtual environment to remove any inconsistency that could arise between the material and the information flows during the requirement analysis.