An approach to the formal specification of holonic control systems

In the manufacturing world, globalisation leads to a trend towards the reduction of batches and product life cycle, and the increase of part diversity, which are in conflict with other requirements, such as the cost reduction achieved with higher productivity. Thus, the challenge is to develop flexible, agile and intelligent management and control architectures that satisfy the referred requirements. The holonic manufacturing and the agent-based manufacturing approaches allow a new approach to the manufacturing problem, through concepts such as modularity, decentralisation, autonomy and re-use of control software components. ADACOR, one of the holonic architectures recently proposed, defines a set of autonomous and intelligent holons aiming to improve the performance of control system in industrial scenarios characterised by the frequent occurrence of unexpected disturbances. The formal modeling and validation of the specifications of the ADACOR-holons and of the interactions between these holons to implement the manufacturing control functions is of critical importance. In this paper, a formal methodology is introduced and applied to model the dynamic behaviour of the ADACOR-holon classes.