Holonic control for manufacturing systems: Functional design of a manufacturing robot cell

The “holonic” concept was proposed in the late 1960s as the basis for modeling highly flexible and dynamic systems. This paper considers the holonic concept and its possibilities in designing next generation manufacturing systems. The holonic concept and its key elements, “holons”, are studied, and a proposal for an object model in an SA (Structured Analysis) domain is given with a feasibility demonstration for designing such systems. In more detail, the control solution is based on negotiation between the holons following the principles of the “contract net” negotiation protocol. The design work relies on the use of advanced simulation and SW tools and obeys the principles of the Real Time Structured Analysis (RT/SA). Through fast prototyping with advanced tools, the functional specifications of a holonic system are tested, and the feasibility of the holonic behavior is shown. A special feature in the prototyping process is direct compilation of the design graphs into executable code for a discrete event simulator, in our case the VHDL (Very high speed integrated circuit Hardware Description Language) simulator.