123 research outputs found

    Eco‐Holonic 4.0 Circular Business Model to  Conceptualize Sustainable Value Chain Towards  Digital Transition 

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    The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a circular business model based on an Eco-Holonic Architecture, through the integration of circular economy and holonic principles. A conceptual model is developed to manage the complexity of integrating circular economy principles, digital transformation, and tools and frameworks for sustainability into business models. The proposed architecture is multilevel and multiscale in order to achieve the instantiation of the sustainable value chain in any territory. The architecture promotes the incorporation of circular economy and holonic principles into new circular business models. This integrated perspective of business model can support the design and upgrade of the manufacturing companies in their respective industrial sectors. The conceptual model proposed is based on activity theory that considers the interactions between technical and social systems and allows the mitigation of the metabolic rift that exists between natural and social metabolism. This study contributes to the existing literature on circular economy, circular business models and activity theory by considering holonic paradigm concerns, which have not been explored yet. This research also offers a unique holonic architecture of circular business model by considering different levels, relationships, dynamism and contextualization (territory) aspects

    A reference model for information specification for metalworking SMEs

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    The work reported in this thesis offers a novel basis for the realisation of specifications for information requirements to meet the distinct operational requirements of metalworking SMEs. This has been achieved through the development of a reference SME enterprise model based on fundamental ideas of the holon and fractal factory concepts. The novel concept of a node holon is introduced, which allows the representation of the human dominated interactions in a company based on the fundamental concepts of the holon. This offers a competitive alternative to the methods for enterprise modelling and information specification which are based solely around business processes and procedural rules. A new representation for the organisation of the SME has been based on identifying the major zones of activity within the enterprise, which is seen to provide a more appropriate representation for companies whose basis for operation is informally structured. Two classes of zones have been identified, these are the business support zone and manufacturing zone. The relationship between a top down description of the enterprise as zones and the complementary bottoms up modelling of the enterprise based on concepts of the node holon are described in detail. A critical study of two candidate modelling architectures, namely CIN40SA and ARIS will show the applicability of the individual architectures for the task information specification. The constituents of the SMEE enterprise reference model is placed within the context of contemporary enterprise modelling practice by mapping against one of the architectures. This will demonstrate how the architectures can readily accommodate new modelling approaches whilst retaining their major advantages, thereby increasing their applicability and potential uptake. The reference SME enterprise model has been readily applied in the study of an SME, where a representation of the company has been achieved solely on the current organisation of its business support and manufacturing activities. The holonic aspects of the enterprise have also been successfully modelled. This process is supported by a CASE tool which has it constructs underpinned by the reference SME enterprise model

    Distributed production planning and control agent based system

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    A model of an Agent based Production Planning and Control (PPC) system able to be dynamically adaptable to local and distributed utilization of production resources and materials is presented. The PPC system is based on the selection of resources to deal with one order of different quantities of one product each time. In this way it is build one scheduling solution for that particular order. The production resources are selected and scheduled using a multiagent system supported by an implementation of the Smith Contract Net, using Java Spaces technology. The multiagent system is based on three main agents: Client, Resource and Manager. These agents negotiate the final product, and the correspondent components, requested by the client. An order for each product (component) triggers a process of dynamic design of a production system to fulfill that particular order. This system exists till the end of the order

    Proposal of a methodology for implementing a service-oriented architecture in distributed manufacturing systems

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    As envisioned by Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS), Next Generation Manufacturing Systems (NGMS) will satisfy the needs of an increasingly fast-paced and demanding market by dynamically integrating systems from inside and outside the manufacturing firm itself into a so-called extended enterprise. However, organizing these systems to ensure the maximum flexibility and interoperability with those from other organizations is difficult. Additionally, a defect in the system would have a great impact: it would affect not only its owner, but also its partners. For these reasons, we argue that a service-oriented architecture (SOA) would be a good candidate. It should be designed following a methodology where services play a central role, instead of being an implementation detail. In order for the architecture to be reliable enough as a whole, the methodology will need to help find errors before they arise in a production environment. In this paper we propose using SOA-specific testing techniques, compare some of the existing methodologies and outline several extensions upon one of them to integrate testing techniques

    Arquitectura holónica de referencia para empresas de fabricación sostenibles distribuidas

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    The introduction of new operational requirements to manufacturing enterprises determines an emergent complexity in their life cycle, due to different aspects such as geographic distribution, volatility and incertainty of business, incorporating TIC and intelligent technology, adoption of "edge technologies" to scales macro, meso and micro and incorporation of sustainability requirements. In the present work, it has established a paradigmatic framework to conceive Enterprises under an Integrated Architecture, as provided by its complexity from the variety required for sustainability (S) integrating business objectives (Economic S.), natural environment (Ecological S.) and individuals, social groups and cultural environment (Social S.). For this, the Holonic paradigm is proposed as a framework for bio-psychosocial inspiration that enables the design of Holonic Enterprises and entities distributed in the range required by the environment.La introducción de nuevos requerimientos operacionales a las empresas de fabricación determina una complejidad emergente en su ciclo de vida debida a distintos aspectos tales como: su distribución geográfica, volatilidad e incertidumbre de los negocios, incorporación de TIC y tecnología inteligente, adopción de “tecnologías de borde” a escalas macro, meso y micro e incorporación de requerimientos de sostenibilidad. En el presente trabajo, se ha establecido un marco paradigmático que permita concebir empresas bajo una arquitectura integrada, que contemple su complejidad desde la variedad requerida para la sostenibilidad (S), integrando los objetivos del negocio (S. Económica), el medioambiente natural (S. Ecológica) y las personas, grupos sociales y el medio cultural (S. Social). Para ello, se plantea el paradigma holónico como un marco de inspiración bio-psico-social que posibilita la concepción de empresas como entidades holónicas distribuidas de la variedad requerida por el entorn

    Evolvable production systems in a RMS context: enabling concepts and technologies

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    The goal of this paper is to describe the research on Evolvable Production Systems (EPS) in the context of Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS), and to briefly describe a multiagent based control solution. RMS, Holonic and EPS concepts are briefly described and compared. Novel inspiration areas and concepts to solve the demanding requirements set by RMS, such as artificial life and complexity theory, are described. Finally, the multiagent based control solution is described as the underlying infrastructure to support all future development in EPS, using concepts such as emergence and self-organisation

    An agile and adaptive holonic architecture for manufacturing control

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    Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. 2004. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Port

    Metodología dirigida por modelos para las pruebas de un sistema distribuido multiagente de fabricación

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    Las presiones del mercado han empujado a las empresas de fabricación a reducir costes a la vez que mejoran sus productos, especializándose en las actividades sobre las que pueden añadir valor y colaborando con especialistas de las otras áreas para el resto. Estos sistemas distribuidos de fabricación conllevan nuevos retos, dado que es difícil integrar los distintos sistemas de información y organizarlos de forma coherente. Esto ha llevado a los investigadores a proponer una variedad de abstracciones, arquitecturas y especificaciones que tratan de atacar esta complejidad. Entre ellas, los sistemas de fabricación holónicos han recibido una atención especial: ven las empresas como redes de holones, entidades que a la vez están formados y forman parte de varios otros holones. Hasta ahora, los holones se han implementado para control de fabricación como agentes inteligentes autoconscientes, pero su curva de aprendizaje y las dificultades a la hora de integrarlos con sistemas tradicionales han dificultado su adopción en la industria. Por otro lado, su comportamiento emergente puede que no sea deseable si se necesita que las tareas cumplan ciertas garantías, como ocurren en las relaciones de negocio a negocio o de negocio a cliente y en las operaciones de alto nivel de gestión de planta. Esta tesis propone una visión más flexible del concepto de holón, permitiendo que se sitúe en un espectro más amplio de niveles de inteligencia, y defiende que sea mejor implementar los holones de negocio como servicios, componentes software que pueden ser reutilizados a través de tecnologías estándar desde cualquier parte de la organización. Estos servicios suelen organizarse como catálogos coherentes, conocidos como Arquitecturas Orientadas a Servicios (‘Service Oriented Architectures’ o SOA). Una iniciativa SOA exitosa puede reportar importantes beneficios, pero no es una tarea trivial. Por este motivo, se han propuesto muchas metodologías SOA en la literatura, pero ninguna de ellas cubre explícitamente la necesidad de probar los servicios. Considerando que la meta de las SOA es incrementar la reutilización del software en la organización, es una carencia importante: tener servicios de alta calidad es crucial para una SOA exitosa. Por este motivo, el objetivo principal de la presente Tesis es definir una metodología extendida que ayude a los usuarios a probar los servicios que implementan a sus holones de negocio. Tras considerar las opciones disponibles, se tomó la metodología dirigida por modelos SODM como punto de partida y se reescribió en su mayor parte con el framework Epsilon de código abierto, permitiendo a los usuarios que modelen su conocimiento parcial sobre el rendimiento esperado de los servicios. Este conocimiento parcial es aprovechado por varios nuevos algoritmos de inferencia de requisitos de rendimiento, que extraen los requisitos específicos de cada servicio. Aunque el algoritmo de inferencia de peticiones por segundo es sencillo, el algoritmo de inferencia de tiempos límite pasó por numerosas revisiones hasta obtener el nivel deseado de funcionalidad y rendimiento. Tras una primera formulación basada en programación lineal, se reemplazó con un algoritmo sencillo ad-hoc que recorría el grafo y después con un algoritmo incremental mucho más rápido y avanzado. El algoritmo incremental produce resultados equivalentes y tarda mucho menos, incluso con modelos grandes. Para sacar más partidos de los modelos, esta Tesis también propone un enfoque general para generar artefactos de prueba para múltiples tecnologías a partir de los modelos anotados por los algoritmos. Para evaluar la viabilidad de este enfoque, se implementó para dos posibles usos: reutilizar pruebas unitarias escritas en Java como pruebas de rendimiento, y generar proyectos completos de prueba de rendimiento usando el framework The Grinder para cualquier Servicio Web que esté descrito usando el estándar Web Services Description Language. La metodología completa es finalmente aplicada con éxito a un caso de estudio basado en un área de fabricación de losas cerámicas rectificadas de un grupo de empresas español. En este caso de estudio se parte de una descripción de alto nivel del negocio y se termina con la implementación de parte de uno de los holones y la generación de pruebas de rendimiento para uno de sus Servicios Web. Con su soporte para tanto diseñar como implementar pruebas de rendimiento de los servicios, se puede concluir que SODM+T ayuda a que los usuarios tengan una mayor confianza en sus implementaciones de los holones de negocio observados en sus empresas

    Cyber-physical Manufacturing in the Light of Professor Kanji Ueda's Legacy

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    Cyber-physical manufacturing, i.e., the formerly never seen integration of the physical and virtual worlds in the manufacturing domain is considered the substance of the 4th industrial revolution. Much of the changes deemed now revolutionary are originated in a long and converging progress of manufacturing science and technology, as well as of computer science, information and communication technologies. One of the pioneers and influential thinkers of production engineering who paved the way towards cyber-physical manufacturing was unquestionably Professor Kanji Ueda (1946-2015). With this paper the authors would like to pay a tribute to his achievements, by highlighting his main contributions not only to the advancement of production engineering and industrial technology but also to the sustainability of our society
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