The ‘Right Brain’ Architecture of a Holonic Manufacturing System

The goal of holonic manufacturing systems is to attain in manufacturing the benefits that holonic organization provides to living organisms and societies, i.e., stability in the face of disturbances, adaptability and flexibility in the face of change, and efficient use of available resources. A key attribute of this kind of system is the ability to define the reasoning model for independent holons (agents). This reasoning has commonly been accomplished through the development of a set of rules described in a textual programming language. These specific languages can be related to human language and specific algorithms processed by a human's left brain. Human expertise involves more than just processing analytical values, however. It also involves the integration of judgmental information processing. In this way, holons can consider issues like survivability, risk, safety, and performance against a dynamically changing set of goals. By integrating judgmental information processing into holonic manufacturing architectures, industry can come closer to achieving the original vision for the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) program. In this presentation we propose a methodology for describing dynamic, judgmental rules that can be integrated into holonic manufacturing systems in a manner that maps to the human's right brain processing.