The Holonic Production Unit: an Approach for an Architecture of Embedded Production Process

Abstract

The holonic system paradigm derives from the word “Holon” that was coined by Arthur Koestler (Kloester, 1967), and it comes from the composition of the Greek word holos that means “the whole” and the suffix -on that indicates part. According to Koestler, every holon has the same structure, that is stable, coherent and its components has the same structure; the organization is invariant, the holon can be part of a bigger holon and it has parts that also are holons. This result was obtained by Koestler in the search of autoorganizational models for biological systems, where he identified structural patterns that form hierarchical embedded structures that are copies of their. This embedded hierarchy was named holarchy; this term reflects the holon trend to act as autonomous entities that cooperate in order to achieve an hierarchical system auto-organized similar to cells/weave/organ hierarchical systems in biology (Christense, 1994). In the holarchy, holons, independently of its aggregation level, have a behaviour as a whole and as parts that cooperates to reach an established goal. Inside the holarchy, holons can simultaneously belong to different groups, having precise rules that describe its behaviour. Internally, its own rules define the holon as an individual entity, with a structure and a functional model and its properties. In a holarchy, the autonomy duality, as a principal contradictory opposition, it is balanced by the knowledge model, which defines the functionality of the system as a composition of semiautonomous holons. The Holonic Enterprise (HE) (McHugh et al, 1995) emerges based on the concepts given in the upper paragraph in order to satisfy the enterprise paradigm of having reconfigurable, open, and flexible production models, which are able to follows the dynamic of the market in a global economic-network. The HE has strategies and relationships that evolve with the time according to the business environment dynamics. Nowadays, formal enterprises look for the accomplishment of the openness paradigm, able to reconfiguration, to be flexible by the creation of autonomous production units able to cooperate or dynamic enterprise networks build to accomplish a specific goal. In this way, an ideal organization or a virtual enterprise is a set of different production units that are geographically distributed simulating to be a unique organization with a specific localization. For a virtual enterprise, it is necessary the existence of a technological O pe n A cc es s D at ab as e w w w .ite ch on lin e. co m