Design pattern for deadlock handling in holonic manufacturing systems

As part of the research on holonic manufacturing systems (HMS), PMA/KULeuven developed a generic architecture far manufacturing control systems. The resulting manufacturing control systems: (i) react to disturbances, e.g. machine breakdown or rush orders; and (ii) allow for easy incorporation of changes to the system to adapt to new markets and incorporate new technology. A crucial function of any manufacturing control system is to avoid pathological states, e.g, deadlock. This paper presents a specific design pattern on how to incorporate a deadlock-handling policy in the proposed HMS architecture. In the literature, many deadlock-handling policies are presented. Some are very generic, others are more application specific, but are maximally permissive. The design pattern described in this paper shall be applicable to all typical deadlock-prevention. and deadlock-avoidance policies. The use of the pattern is illustrated using two well-known deadlock-handling policies: the deadlock-prevention policy based upon ranking of resources; and the Banker's algorithm for deadlock avoidance.