A holonic approach to myopic behavior correction for the allocation process in flexible-job shops using recursiveness

Abstract

This chapter's main interest is the myopic behaviour inherent to holonic control architectures. Myopic behaviour is the lack of coherence among local decision-making and system's global goals. So far, holonic architectures use mediator entities to overcome this issue, bringing the holonic paradigms more toward hierarchy than heterarchy. Instead, this chapter explores the recursiveness characteristic of holonic manufacturing systems (HMS) as a possible way to correct myopic behaviour, by distributing decision-making over adjunct entities. The chapter explains our approach and its agent-based implementation for solving the allocation problem in a flexible job-shop. Results from simulations are compared with a mixed-integer linear program to determine its efficiency in terms of makespan and execution time. Preliminary results encourage further research in this area. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.