Networked manufacturing control: An industrial case

The European Project MABE has investigated the application of a holonic manufacturing execution system (HMES) to networked production. This HMES implements the PROSA reference architecture [1]. Intelligent products manage their production in cooperation with intelligent resources. These intelligent products generate swarms of lightweight smart objects that respectively explore for suitable routings and reserve capacity at the intelligent resources [2]. The system is a self-organizing design. The research results revealed that the HMES design scales, without much effort, from a single plant control toward the control of a manufacturing network. Moreover, the HMES design was able to handle the part flows for the heat and surface treatment. Additionally, MABE has triggered research on trust to enable the HMES to cope with networks comprising independent organizations. Its results target cooperation in semi-closed networks. The research allows using track records during subsequent interactions, for instance to decide about slack values in schedules.