Ah. Overmars et Dj. Toncich, HYBRID FMS CONTROL ARCHITECTURES BASED ON HOLONIC PRINCIPLES, International journal of flexible manufacturing systems, 8(3), 1996, pp. 263-278
The escalation in processor technologies and the corresponding reducti
on in costs have enabled alternative FMS control architectures to be d
eveloped without the restrictions of ''fixed machine controller bounda
ries.'' These new architectures can be based upon the use of intellige
nt servo axes, which are desccribed in this article, as flexible numer
ical control (FNC). In current parlance, the FNC is a ''part movement
holon'' within a manufacturing cell. The control architectures that ca
n be derived from the FNC concept are referred to as hybrid architectu
res and share the emerging attributes of holonics. This article detail
s the problems that arise in the scheduling and control of FMSs in the
light of hybrid control architectures. A number of traditional schedu
ling approaches have been devised to cope with the scheduling of parts
to discrete machines, but the problem here is to ascribe the processi
ng (machining) of part features to axis groups. This article documents
how two research programs, undertaken at the CIM Centre at Swinburne
University of Technology in Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia, have endeav
ored to address the problem of hybrid architectures and their associat
ed scheduling.