Scheduling and Control of Flexible Manufacturing Systems: a Holonic Approach

Abstract

Holonic Manufacturing Systems are a new manufacturing paradigm. They are included into distributed methodologies and propose new manufacturing management schemes that combine self-organization, dynamic hierarchies and horizontal relationships. This approach is closer to manufacturing system nature than centralized or strictly traditional hierarchical approaches. It allows modeling manufacturing systems in a more realistic way. So, it make easier to implement more flexible, scalable, responsiveness, reconfigurable, and robust production management systems. In this paper we propose a holonic system for scheduling and control of flexible manufacturing systems. The system is based on a new architecture that integrates two decision levels: a level of auction-based scheduling, where each holon performs its own local schedule, and another level of dispatching and control that coordinate holons activities. Unlike other studies in which local schedules are integrated into a global schedule that centralizes the system, the proposed system is not so. The dispatching and control mechanism is responsible to integrate the local programs. In addition, the developed prototype can operate with different degrees of decentralization, which allows evaluating the advantages that our approach provides by means of simulation.

Keywords

• Control de la producción
• sistemas de producción
• algoritmos de programación
• sistemas de fabricación flexibles
• sistemas de fabricación inteligentes