A study on a real-time scheduling of holonic manufacturing systems (1st report, decision making processes based on effectiveness values)

This paper deals with a real time scheduling system of a holonic manufacturing system for machining process. The holonic manufacturing system was proposed by HMS cooperative research project aiming at realizing more flexible and robust control structures of the manufacturing systems which can cope with the changes of the product volume and variety and the unscheduled disruptions, such as status changes of equipment and input of high priority jobs. Decision-making procedures of individual holons are discussed in the paper to establish a real time scheduling of the holonic manufacturing systems. Systematic procedures are proposed for coordination process among holons based on effectiveness values of the individual holons. The effectiveness values are evaluated by the individual holons referring to their own objective functions.