Achieving holonic control - an incremental approach

Holonic manufacturing is a concept of considerable promise in terms of providing the flexibility and responsiveness required by virtual enterprises. However if this promise is to be realised then two key issues need to be addressed. Firstly, migration strategies need to be developed to enable existing manufacturing systems which use conventional controller technology to progressively incorporate holonic manufacturing concepts. Secondly, holonic manufacturing principles need to be applied and integrated at all levels of the production planning and control process. In this paper, our primary concern is the first issue--we present and evaluate the technical feasibility of a strategy for the incremental introduction of holonic manufacturing principles into existing production control systems. We believe that the approach that we present, through its adoption of a strong part and task execution focus, will provide a sound platform for addressing the second issue.

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