Designing Holonic Manufacturing Systems using the IEC 61499 (function block) architecture

Today, people want highly-customized products to satisfy their individual r equirements. However traditional manufacturing technology is not geared tow ards high-mix, low-volume manufacturing. Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMS ) is a new paradigm to bridge this divide. HMS offers enterprises a new bre ed of technology to continuously reconfigure themselves to manufacture a la rger variety of products in smaller batch sizes, and do this profitably. A suitable metaphor for implementing the holonic manufacturing system is the emerging IEC function block architecture. The paper describes how function blocks can be used to build such holonic manufacturing systems. We also ill ustrate the merits of our approach through a real-world engine assembly lin e being developed by DaimlerChrysler.