HOLONIC APPROACH FOR SYSTEM DESIGN OF RECONFIGURABLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS Idilia Batchkova 1 , Georgi Popov 2 , Grigor Stambolov 2 , 1 University of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy, Sofia, idilia@uctm.edu 2 Technical University of Sofia gepop@tu-sofia.bg Abstract: The increasing global competition required the manufacturing enterprises to provide manufacturing systems with both high flexibility and high productivity functions. This is possible by using a new concept for creating of machine tools and systems namely the reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS). Intelligent Holonic approach is used to support the advanced hybrid system organization. The paper proposes and discusses new holonic reference architectures for reconfigurable manufacturing systems, which support the dynamically reconfiguration through a combination of the autonomy of reaction to disturbances with the co-operative tendencies found by centralized on-line scheduling holon. The suggested reference model is used to design a prototype of reconfigurable manufacturing system for processing of automotive diesel cylinder heads. Copyright © 2004 IFAC Keywords: Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems, Holonic systems, optimal scheduling, on-line control, UML 1. INTRODUCTION The global competition and information technology are the driving forces behind recent changes in manufacturing. The needs of industry today require modification of manufacturing systems to assure better and faster response to customer requirements, ever higher quality products, increased flexibility, faster introduction of new products and faster response to marketplace changes. The today existing manufacturing systems cannot satisfy these requirements. For example, the dedicated transfer lines, characterized by a high productivity, do not make possible the manufacture of a variety of products (flexibility) on the same system (Tönshoff and Schülle, 2001). On the other side, the manual multi-work machines are principally unlimited in respect of flexibility but they have low productivity. At the end of 90-their years, the need of simultaneous high productivity and flexibility leads a concept of reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS). The reconfigurable manufacturing was identified as the highest priority for future research in manufacturing, and one of the six key manufacturing challenges for the year 2020 (National Research Council, 1998). RMSs do not exist today, but during the last few years, a lot of new techniques and methodologies, needed for the reconfiguration, have occurred. The most important are in respect to the software development of modular open architecture based control, modular machine tools design, standardized reference architectures for manufacturing systems and control and AI. Some of them are discussed in section 2 of the paper. The main aim of the work proposed in this paper is to utilize a system approach based on adoption of the concepts of Holonic Manufacturing Systems in the context of the system level design of RMSs. This paper proposes an alternative intelligent decentralized approach for cooperative and concurrent on-line scheduling and scheduling execution (manufacturing control) on the base of an extension of holonic reference architecture, suggested by Wyns et al. (1999). The approach is illustrated with a RMS arrangement for series of IFAC DECOM-TT 2004 Automatic Systems for Building the Infrastructure in Developing Countries October 3 - 5, 2004 Bansko, Bulgaria