Abstract—This paper focuses on simplifying and easing the integration of a new machine into an existing conventional hierarchical manufacturing system. Based on a distributed manufacturing paradigm (Holonic Component Based Architecture – HCBA), it proposes the functions and interfaces the new machine and the existing manufacturing system should possess, so that ready and simple configuration of additional machines into an existing manufacturing system (plug and play) can be achieved. The configuration process is intended to include not only mechanical and electrical interfaces, but also decision system interfaces (such as planning, scheduling and shop floor control) too. I. INTRODUCTION Manufacturing practices in the future will have to cope with customers demanding low cost products whose needs are likely to change quickly. Hence, the manufacturing operations will have to be organized differently and be more effective in responding. Traditional centralized manufacturing planning, scheduling and control mechanisms have been found incapable of supporting changing production methods or highly dynamic variations in product requirements [1]. Because of this, much research effort [1],[2] is being devoted to develop manufacturing systems which are able react to changes rapidly and cost- effectively. One of the key properties of the manufacturing system which can react to changes rapidly and cost effectively is reconfigurability [2]. The term reconfigurability can be defined as the ability of a manufacturing system to be simply altered in a timely and cost effective manner [3]. The reconfiguration of a manufacturing system can be categorized into three types; addition of new components, removal of existing components, or modifying existing components. Note that manufacturing components can be physical components, such as machines, or logical components such as control software. This paper focuses on simplifying the process of integrating (adding) new machines into an existing conventional manufacturing system. The paper begins by Manuscript received December 15, 2006. W. Covanich, D. C. McFarlane J. Brusey and A. M. Farid are with the Institute for Manufacturing System, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK; email: wc226@cam.ac.uk reviewing the existing integration approaches and distributed manufacturing paradigms in section 2. Section 3 presents the proposed method and an example is given in section 4. Finally, section 5 summarizes the paper II. BACKGROUND This section gives a brief review of the previous work relating to the integration of new machines into an existing manufacturing system. It begins by giving examples of the solutions used in computer domain. Existing approaches used to solve the integration problem in conventional manufacturing systems are described next. Then agent based solutions are discussed. Finally the gaps for the existing methods are identified. A. Integration in computer domain The problem of reconfiguration does not exist only in manufacturing domain. Another domain in which the need for reconfiguration is frequent is the computer domain. Since this paper focuses only on the addition of new machines into an existing manufacturing system, only solutions for this type of reconfiguration in the computer domain will be discussed in this section. Some examples of the integration problems in computer domain are; to add a new peripheral to a PC, and to add a new computer into a computer network. In the first case, each computer peripheral is usually different and the way each peripheral can be controlled is normally dissimilar. Computers and their operating systems (OS) cannot be expected to know how to control every device, both now and in the future. To solve this problem, OS essentially dictate how every computer peripherals should be controlled [4]. The “device driver” is used to translate the generalized command from OS into a specific command used to control a particular device [4]. In summary OS only need to communicate with the device driver. The device driver can be considered as a wrapper that wraps around the actual device. It acts as an interface between OS and the physical device as shown in fig. 1a. Integrating a New Machine into an Existing Manufacturing System by using Holonic Approach Wutthiphat Covanich, Duncan McFarlane, James Brusey and Amro M. Farid