Title: Fundamental behaviour of holonic system

Authors: Shigeki Sugiyama, Ambalavanar Tharumarajah

Addresses: Research Institute of Manufacturing Information Technology, 4-179-19 Sue-Cho, Kakamigahra Gifu 509-0108, Japan. ' CSIRO Manufacturing Science and Technology, Locked Bag 9, Preston, Victoria 3072, Australia

Abstract: Nowadays, there are so many huge, complex and chaotic production/control/management systems in this world, compared with the situation of several years ago, waiting to be managed intelligently in order to behave as they are expected. But it is quite hard even to find a method for describing such systems clearly and precisely, because they consist of many parts with the parts having many common and differentiating factors while exhibiting characteristics of dependence as well as independence with added complications of having to deal with a changing environment and the consequent changes in their spatial and temporal arrangements. This makes it the most difficult to represent those using conventional techniques of description. As a consequence, the systems do not easily lend themselves to be described with conventional controls, Fuzzy, Neural, Artificial Intelligence (AI), soft-computing and other new methods in engineering fields, referring to Anderson, Elman and Bloom et al. This paper introduces a new idea of Holon that is able to represent huge, complex and chaotic systems clearly and precisely in order that they can be designed and controlled/managed intelligently and flexibly.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; AI; production control; holonic systems; production engineering; holonic manufacturing; neural networks; NNs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOI.2007.015644

International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics, 2007 Vol.2 No.4, pp.410 - 420

Published online: 06 Nov 2007 *

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