Assessing ease of reconfiguration of conventional and Holonic manufacturing systems: Approach and case study

This paper focuses on comparing the ease of reconfiguration of Holonic and conventional manufacturing systems (HMS and CMS). By using the recently proposed guideline for assessing ease of reconfiguration [Covanich, W., McFarlane, D., Farid, A.M., 2008. Guidelines for Evaluating the Ease of Reconfiguration of Manufacturing Systems. Daejeon, South Korea. INDIN08], the paper evaluates the effort required to introduce a new machine into both conventional and Holonic manufacturing systems. Examining particularly the ease of reconfiguration, it is found that HMS with conventional hardware may have little advantage over CMS, while HMS with ideal hardware appears to have significant advantage over CMS.