Holonic rationale and self-organization on design of complex evolvable systems

Abstract

Old-fashioned centralized and rigid control structures are becoming inflexible to address the current requirements of reconfigurability, responsiveness and robustness. The Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMS) paradigm, which was pointed out to face these requirements, translates the concepts inherited from social organizations and biology to the manufacturing world. It offers an alternative way of designing adaptive systems where the traditional centralized control is replaced by decentralization over distributed entities. In spite of its potential, methods regarding the self-adaptation and selforganization of complex systems are still missing. This paper discusses how the insights from biology in connection with new fields of computer science can be useful to enhance the holonic design aiming to achieve more self-adaptive and evolvable systems.