Holonic and multi-agent systems in industry

The concept of holonic systems has its roots in the desire to understand the structure of natural systems (e.g. living organisms and social organisations) and in particular their ability to behave in a stable yet flexible manner in the face of change. It is not surprising that the lessons learned from these natural systems could help with the design and control of complex man-made systems. However, a key issue is, how can one translate holonic concepts to real industrial environments? For example, one of the key holonic concepts, the holon, can be described as a self-contained autonomous and cooperative entity; when deciding how to implement holons, software agents appear to be the logical choice. In this paper, we summarise the presentations and discussions from a workshop held at the recent International Conference on Autonomous Agents that focused on this issue and brought together researchers from both the holonic systems and the multi-agents systems communities.