Holonic manufacturing scheduling: architecture, cooperation mechanism, and implementation

Summary form only given. A holonic manufacturing system (HMS) is a manufacturing system where the key elements, such as machines, cells, factories, parts, products, persons, teams, etc., have autonomous and cooperative properties. These elements are called "holons". In an HMS, each holon\´s activities are determined through cooperation with other holons. In this paper, holonic scheduling is developed for a factory consisting of multiple cells. The cooperation mechanisms among holons are established based on the Lagrangian relaxation technique of mathematical optimization. Through a novel modeling of the interactions among cells and a decomposition-coordination solution method, cooperation across cells is performed without intruding individual cells\´ private information and decision autonomy. The embedded route selection mechanism also balances the load among candidate cells. The clear delineation of information, responsibilities, and interfaces of individual holons and the object-oriented implementation makes the system extendible to more complicated manufacturing settings.