Collaborative Design Approach for Holonic Manufacturing Systems

Future manufacturing systems will be required to be agile, flexible, and fault-tolerant. Next generation manufacturing systems will be integrated networks of distributed resources simultaneously capable of combined knowledge processing and material processing. The objective of this research is to define a generic open architecture for such kind of distributed manufacturing systems, especially for holonic manufacturing systems (HMS). The primary focus will be given to its collaborative design and implementation approach based on agent technology and emerging function block standards. This paper will first address issues associated with HMS, and then discuss the two useful implementation techniques – agent technology and function block. Finally, a collaborative design approach for the next generation HMS will be proposed based on these implementation techniques. Emphasis will also be extended and given to metamorphic control of HMS using multi-agent negotiation and cooperation. The proposed approach, together with its open architecture, shows much promise for improving the entire manufacturing system performance under the ever-changing real-time and distributed environments.