Embedded holonics systems in production process: Holonic unit of production

• Edgar Chacón Universidad de Los Andes-Venezuela
• Isabel Besembel Universidad de Los Andes-Venezuela
• Dulce Rivero Universidad de Los Andes-Venezuela
• Juan Cardillo Universidad de Los Andes-Venezuela

Abstract

The automation of a production process needs a complete description of the productive process in order to be able to: “make a production plan”, “perform a production scheduling”, “control” and “supervise” it. The complexity of building such a description of the productive process model emerges from the coexistence of two points of view that are contradictory: The model precision, which implies the construction of total models that cannot be reached and the necessity of the global knowledge that is associated to the different views of the process. These views show: the organizational structure of the model, dynamics of each distinct component, different temporal scales where decisions are taken. The Holonic approach has been used to handle this complexity in order to manage both, the precision and the global aspects simultaneously. In this article, we show a reference model, where a productive process is seen as the conjunction cooperating production units. These Production Units are described as an invariant embedded system with holon characteristic, named as: the Holonic Production Unit.