This paper provides an executable design framework for modelling and controlling holonic manufacturing processes and systems. This framework is based on reconfigurable manufacturing holonic modules. These holonic modules consist of holons represented using parameterised Petri Net modules. As the suggested modelling framework shares advantages of IEC 61499 and FCPN-std, it supports the design of complex holonic manufacturing processes/system and allows simulation and analysis under general manufacturing uncertainties. Self-organisation activity in a holonic manufacturing system is explained using an evolution concept. A holon's inner evolution is executed through cascading parameterised Petri Net modules. This evolution is used for capturing the dynamic characteristics of a manufacturing environment. Routeing and reconfiguration is fulfilled through configuration evolution. It is achieved using the suggested constraint-based fuzzy Q-learning algorithm. The provided framework and two evolution algorithms ar...

Executable design and control framework using reconfigurable manufacturing holons and its evolution algorithm

One of the key design issues for distributed systems is to find proper
 planning and coordination mechanisms when knowledge and decision capabilities
 are spread along the system. This contribution refers holonic manufacturing
 execution systems and highlights the way a proper modeling method - Petri
 nets - makes evident certain problems that can appear when agents have to
 simultaneously treat more goals. According to holonic organization the
 planning phase is mainly dependent on finding an appropriate resource
 allocation mechanism. The type of weakness is established by means of the
 proposed Petri net models and further proved by simulation experiments. A
 solution to make the holonic scheme avoid a failure in resource allocation is
 mentioned, too.

http://www.comsis.org/pdf.php?id=nwp-1003

Modeling a holonic agent based solution by Petri nets

It had always been the intention of the holonic manufacturing community that holons would provide a vertical integration capability for manufacturing enterprises by linking the control world with the business world However, that vision has not been realized, and in this paper, we will discuss why this is so We will then present an alternative goal-based modeling approach that is faithful to the holonic concept, but offers, we believe, a way forward

A goal-based approach to holonic manufacturing

This research book presents a conceptual model for Holonic Manufacturing Execution that draws together research threads from both holonics and multi-agent systems. In holonics, we found the notion of a holon as an entity being both a whole in itself and part of a larger system, and in multi-agent systems, we found the modelling approach of expressing software behaviour in terms of Beliefs, Desires and Intentions. The conceptual model brings focus to the execution facet of Holonic Manufacturing, and forms a bridge between the areas of planning / scheduling and control; the areas of predominant concerns in the past decade of active research on Holonic Manufacturing. We present the model by mapping it onto two current BDI programming frameworks, and use this for two separate implementations of an execution systems for an industrial strength robotic assembly cell. This work also introduces the Team Programming paradigm, which is something of interest to the wider complex systems community as a new paradigm f or complex systems development.

Ralph Rnnquist

Papers

Holonic Execution: A BDI Approach (Studies in Computational Intelligence) (Studies in Computational Intelligence)