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Abstract
In today's global economy, manufacturing companies must be able to change both the product variety and production quantity without incurring major disturbances in the production process. A manufacturing system capable of performing these changes efficiently needs a control system flexible enough to go from one state to another without significant delays in production. To compensate for the deficiencies of both hierarchical and heterarchical control systems, a control architecture based on the holonic concept is proposed. After presenting the general holonic control architecture, the paper focuses on the integration of the holonic-based control concept in the design of an automated material-handling control system. When performing transport activities in a manufacturing system, due to its architecture, the holonic system can operate both as a hierarchical system, following a predefined schedule during normal operation conditions, and as a heterarchical system in the presence of disturbances.
Acknowledgement
Work was mainly supported by a grant from the Virginia Commonwealth Technology Research Fund, Strategic Institutional Enhancement Program (CTRF Grant No. SE2002–03).