Holonic Control Metamodel

Current production leanings, such as high product variability, demand advanced manufacturing systems (MSs). An example is the holonic MS (HMS) in which entities (e.g., resources and products) are ldquosmart.rdquo These entities are called holons (HLs), and their interactions are coordinated by holonic control (HC). Indeed, the complexity of HMS has required new design and test tools. In this context, this paper presents an HC metamodel, which was applied to a particular simulator. In this control solution, causal knowledge is enclosed in Rule HLs, which receive facts about Resource HLs and deliberate about the actions to be executed. The inference happens by means of an innovative net of notifications built from expert knowledge, in the form of (Sub)-HLs, which allows high reactivity, HL decoupling, conflict handling, coherent control expression and execution, and easy control adaptations. This solution still considers other issues, namely, the product-driven manufacturing: a tendency related to customized production in which Product HLs negotiate with Resource HLs aiming at adaptability and reactivity. In this case, Rule HLs intermediate and organize the collaborations of Product HLs and Resource HLs. This paper proposes to use the metamodel to compose a process-driven control and a product-driven control applied to a similar simulated HMS, highlighting their differences and advantages.

I. Introduction

The exigency for quality, diversity, and time to market by the majority of consumer markets has augmented in the last decades. In the manufacturing industry, a recurrent requirement to assure a good position in the market is the capacity to produce a large number of product types in short time, guaranteeing a certain agility with respect to the demand and delivering time [20], [43].