Holonic Manufacturing Systems is one of the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) program's six major projects resulting from a feasibility study conducted in the beginning of the 1990’s. The objective of the work of the HMS consortium is to "attain in manufacturing the benefits that holonic organisation provides to living organisms and societies, e.g., stability in the face of disturbances, adaptability and flexibility in the face of change, and efficient use of available resources."
The term "holon" was coined by Arthur Koestler who observed a dichotomy of wholeness and partness in living organisms and social organisations and stated that "wholes and parts in the absolute sense do not exist anywhere." To understand these systems, Koestler used the "Janus Effect" as a metaphor for this dichotomy of wholeness and partness observed in many such systems: i.e., "like the Roman god Janus, members of a hierarchy have two faces looking in opposite directions." To explain this, he suggested a new term to describe the members of these systems: "holon" from the Greek (holos meaning "whole" and the suffix "on" implying "part" as in "proton" or "neutron"). In order to attain the benefits of Koestler's holonic organisations, an HMS consists of autonomous, self-reliant manufacturing units, called holons that co-operate to achieve the overall manufacturing system objectives.
Like HMS, multi-agent systems also consist of co-operative and autonomous manufacturing units, but unlike HMS, MAS can be thought of as a general software technology that was motivated by fundamental research questions. Research in MAS has lead to numerous advances in distributed systems (e.g., multi-agent negotiation) that has contributed to much of the work on distributed manufacturing systems control as well as much of the work on HMS.
M. Fletcher, R.W. Brennan and D.H. Norrie, “Modeling and reconfiguring intelligent holonic manufacturing systems with internet-based mobile agents,” Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 14(1), pp. 7-23, 2003.
R.W. Brennan and D.H. Norrie, “From FMS to HMS,” In: S.M. Deen (Ed.): Advances in the Holonic Approach to Agent-based Manufacturing, Springer-Verlag, pp. 31-52, 2003.
D.H. Norrie and R.W. Brennan (Eds.) Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering, Special Issue on Holons: Autonomous and Cooperative Agents for Industry, 9(3), 2002.
Email: brennan@enme.ucalgary.ca Telephone: (403) 220-5798
Last updated: 9 June 2003