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

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

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 autonomous real-time planning and control of small to medium enterprises

The research reported in this paper is built on the use of the concepts of ‘holonic manufacturing’ and is seeking new methods to reinforce the autonomous and cooperative attributes of planning and control activities within human centred manufacturing facilities. It is claimed that in small enterprises, where the success depends on the skill of individual employees and their ability to collaborate, the manufacturing performance can be improved by the use of the appropriate information technology (IT) tools and the appropriate planning and control structure, designed and developed on the basis of these holonic concepts. Such novel tools and planning structures must provide the most appropriate information in a way that enhances collaborative activity within the business and strengthens the role of the individual. This paper identifies a number of major requirements that must be considered for the design and implementation of an effective production planning and control (PPC) structure, tailored for the needs of small enterprises. Based on these requirements and the use of holonic manufacturing concepts, a novel distributed autonomous real-time planning and control structure is presented. The final sections of the paper describe the implementation of such a planning and control structure within a typical configuration for the production facility of a small metalworking enterprise

Agent-based distributed manufacturing control: a state-of-the-art survey

Manufacturing has faced significant changes during the last years, namely the move from a local economy towards a global and competitive economy, with markets demanding for highly customized products of high quality at lower costs, and with short life cycles. In this environment, manufacturing enterprises, to remain competitive, must respond closely to customer demands by improving their flexibility and agility, while maintaining their productivity and quality. Dynamic response to emergence is becoming a key issue in manufacturing field because traditional manufacturing control systems are built upon rigid control architectures, which cannot respond efficiently and effectively to dynamic change. In these circumstances, the current challenge is to develop manufacturing control systems that exhibit intelligence, robustness and adaptation to the environment changes and disturbances. The introduction of multi-agent systems and holonic manufacturing systems paradigms addresses these requirements, bringing the advantages of modularity, decentralization, autonomy, scalability and re- usability. This paper surveys the literature in manufacturing control systems using distributed artificial intelligence techniques, namely multi-agent systems and holonic manufacturing systems principles. The paper also discusses the reasons for the weak adoption of these approaches by industry and points out the challenges and research opportunities for the future

Business strategy driven IT systems for engineer-to-order and make-to-order manufacturing enterprises

This thesis reports research into the specification and implementation of an Information Technology (IT) Route Map. The purpose of the Route Map is to enable rapid design and deployment of IT solutions capable of semi-automating business processes in a manufacturing enterprise. The Map helps structure transition processes involved in “identification of key business strategies and design of business processes” and “choice of enterprise systems and supporting implementation techniques”. Common limitations of current Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are observed and incorporated as Route Map implications and constraints. Scope of investigation is targeted at Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) that employ Engineer-To-Order (ETO) and Make-To-Order (MTO) business processes. However, a feature of the Route Map is that it takes into account contemporary business concerns related to “globalisation”, “mergers and acquisitions” and “typical resource constraint problems of SMEs”. In the course of the research a “Business Strategy Driven IT System Concept” was conceived and examined. The main purpose of this concept is to promote the development of agile and innovative business activity in SMEs. The Road Map encourages strategy driven solutions to be (a) specified based on the use of emerging enterprise engineering theories and (b) implemented and changed using componentbased systems design and composition techniques. Part-evaluation of the applicability and capabilities of the Road Map has been carried out by conducting industrial survey and case study work. This assesses requirements of real industrial problems and solutions. The evaluation work has also been enabled by conducting a pilot implementation of the thesis concepts at the premises of a partner SME

Achieving manufacturing excellence through the integration of enterprise systems and simulation

This paper discusses the significance of the enterprise systems and simulation integration in improving shop floor’s short-term production planning capability. The ultimate objectives are to identify the integration protocols, optimisation parameters and critical design artefacts, thereby identifying key ‘ingredients’ that help in setting out a future research agenda in pursuit of optimum decision-making at the shop floor level. While the integration of enterprise systems and simulation gains a widespread agreement within the existing work, the optimality, scalability and flexibility of the schedules remained unanswered. Furthermore, there seems to be no commonality or pattern as to how many core modules are required to enable such a flexible and scalable integration. Nevertheless, the objective of such integration remains clear, i.e. to achieve an optimum total production time, lead time, cycle time, production release rates and cost. The issues presently faced by existing enterprise systems (ES), if properly addressed, can contribute to the achievement of manufacturing excellence and can help identify the building blocks for the software architectural platform enabling the integration

An agile and adaptive holonic architecture for manufacturing control

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

Life Cycle Engineering 4.0: A Proposal to Conceive Manufacturing Systems for Industry 4.0 Centred on the Human Factor (DfHFinI4.0)

Engineering 4.0 environments are characterised by the digitisation, virtualisation, and connectivity of products, processes, and facilities composed of reconfigurable and adaptive socio-technical cyber-physical manufacturing systems (SCMS), in which Operator 4.0 works in real time in VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) contexts and markets. This situation gives rise to the interest in developing a framework for the conception of SCMS that allows the integration of the human factor, management, training, and development of the competencies of Operator 4.0 as fundamental aspects of the aforementioned system. The present paper is focused on answering how to conceive the adaptive manufacturing systems of Industry 4.0 through the operation, growth, and development of human talent in VUCA contexts. With this objective, exploratory research is carried, out whose contribution is specified in a framework called Design for the Human Factor in Industry 4.0 (DfHFinI4.0). From among the conceptual frameworks employed therein, the connectivist paradigm, Ashby's law of requisite variety and Vigotsky's activity theory are taken into consideration, in order to enable the affective-cognitive and timeless integration of the human factor within the SCMS. DfHFinI4.0 can be integrated into the life cycle engineering of the enterprise reference architectures, thereby obtaining manufacturing systems for Industry 4.0 focused on the human factor. The suggested framework is illustrated as a case study for the Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture (PERA) methodology, which transforms it into PERA 4.0

Coordinating negotiations in data-intensive collaborative working environments using an agent-based model-driven platform

This paper tackles the interoperability problems of enterprise information systems by presenting a distributive model-driven platform for parallel coordination of multiple negotiations in data-intensive collaborative working environments. The proposed model was validated and verified by an industrial application scenario within the European research project H2020 C2NET (Cloud Collaborative Manufacturing Networks). This real scenario developed data-intensive collaborative and cloud-enabled tools that allow the optimisation of the supply network of manufacturing SMEs, proposing a negotiation solution based on a model-driven interoperable decentralised architecture.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Agents enabling cyber-physical production systems

In order to be prepared for future challenges facing the industrial production domain, Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) consisting of intelligent entities which collaborate and exchange information globally are being proclaimed recently as part of Industrie 4.0. In this article the requirements of CPPS and abilities of agents as enabling technology are discussed. The applicability of agents for realizing CPPS is exemplarily shown based on three selected use cases with different requirements regarding real-time and dependability. The paper finally concludes with opportunities and open research issues that need to be faced in order to achieve agent-based CPPSs.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio