Holonic Execution

The term “holon” was ?rst introduced by Koestler (Koestler, 1967) to c- ture the idea that both biological and social structures consisted of entities that were part of a larger whole, while being self-contained entities in their own right. These entities were called holons and the structures that they form werecalled holarchies. Inthisbook,wepresentaconceptualmodelforholonic manufacturing execution and then use this model to develop two implem- tations for an execution system for an industrial strength robotic assembly cell. The model is based on the experience that we have gained in developing a number of agent-based execution systems over the past 10 years. Manufacturingexecutionisthatactivitywhichisconcernedwiththem- agement of actual manufacturing tasks. It involves interaction with device controllers, but it is conceptually separate from manufacturing control. The applicability of the holonic concept to manufacturing was ?rst noted by Suda (Suda, 1990) and this led to the formation of the Holonic Manufacturing Systems project in 1993 (HMS Consortium, 2001). The HMS project was conducted under the auspices of the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) program (IMS, 2005) and remains of the largest of the IMS projects to have been undertaken. The HMS project spanned three separate phases, ending in 2004. In addition, a signi?cant amount of work (including the work described in this book) was conducted outside the HMS project. Conceptually, holons are similar to agents.

Holonic manufacturing has been an active area of research for the past decade. However, this work has been predominately in the areas of planning and scheduling on the one hand and control on the other. In this book we propose these two areas can be integrated through adopting a focus on execution. In developing a conceptual model for holonic manufacturing execution, we draw together research threads from both holonics (the notion of a holon being both a whole in itself and part of a larger system) and multi-agent systems (the modelling of behaviour in terms of Beliefs, Desires and Intentions). The resulting model is mapped to two different BDI frameworks and then used to develop two separate execution systems for an industrial strength robotic assembly cell.

As such, the book will be of interest to both researchers and practitioners in the holonic systems, manufacturing systems and multi-agent systems communities. It will also be of interest to the wider complex systems community, as it introduces what may become a new paradigm for complex systems development in the form of Team Programming.