Holonic control of an engine assembly plant - An industrial evaluation

At the beginning of the 1990s, the holonic manufacturing paradigm was proposed (among others) to meet the upcoming challenges in the manufacturing industry. Even though the holonic idea is appealing, its implementation would revolutionize the way manufacturing is done today and thus needs to be thoroughly evaluated before it can be adopted. To this end, an industrial feasibility study for (automotive) engine assembly was conducted within the international holonic manufacturing project. During this feasibility study, the deficits of an existing engine assembly system were analyzed and a new assembly layout and control system was proposed. The new assembly system was then compared to the existing assembly system on the basis of a realistic simulation with plant data. The results of the comparison showed that the holonic approach provides robustness and scalability which is unprecedented in existing assembly systems.