Holonic controller and assembly task planning

A next generation manufacturing system is strongly required to realize flexible and agile production. For this purpose the HMS Project of the IMS Program has discussed and prototyped a holonic manufacturing system composed of autonomous and cooperative objects called holons. The holonic controller is one of the prototyped systems based on the concept of the holonic manufacturing system. It is developed to construct a planning and control system of a shop and/or a cell, and experimentally applied to induction motor assembly planning. First, the holonic controller constructs a holonic system by generating holons from the given data. That is, it duplicates template holonic software, names it, and stores the respective data. Each holon has respective instruction decomposition ability and instruction allocation function to other holons through negotiation. Secondly, the holonic controller carries out given instructions by decomposing instructions in each holon and allocating decomposed instructions through negotiations to executable holons. The holonic controller can animate and monitor its processes on computer displays and the constructed holonic system can be checked. Assembly planning of induction motors is the first testbed for holonic controller. About 50 holons cooperating with each other can generate assembly plans, and the usefulness of the holonic controller is verified