The integration of human workers as resource holons in a holonic manufacturing cell.

[摘要] ENGLISH SUMMARY: This thesis documents research conducted into the integration of human workersas resource holons in a holonic manufacturing cell. The research is motivated bythe need to develop manufacturing systems that allow smaller enterprises indeveloping countries, such as South Africa, to be competitive in a global market,without contributing to unemployment. These systems must be selectivelyautomated, so that the critical processes are automated while the other processesretain the use of manual labour.The objectives of this research are to develop architectures for human integrationin holonic manufacturing systems and to evaluate and compare thesearchitectures. To this end, holonic control strategies and the proposedarchitectures for human integration were implemented with a testbedmanufacturing cell at Stellenbosch University.The structure of the holonic control strategies is based on the PROSA referencearchitecture and the mapping of the testbed cell components to holons isexplained. The holonic control system for the testbed cell was implemented as amulti agent system using the JADE platform. The higher level control and lowerlevel control of the subsystems of the cell are described in detail.Two architectures for human integration in holonic systems were developed,namely the interface holon architecture (IHA) and the worker holon architecture(WHA). The IHA makes use of a fixed interface to communicate with a worker thatis assigned to a specific workstation by a human supervisor. The WHA makes useof a mobile interface, dedicated to a specific worker, to communicate with theworker. The WHA also makes use of an automated supervisor software agent thatmanages the workers on the factory floor instead of a human supervisor. Thesearchitectures, as well as their implementation and integration with the holoniccontrol system of the testbed cell, is described in detail.A series of experiments were devised to evaluate the two architectures for humanintegration. The experiments were performed and the results are analysed anddiscussed. The results show that the WHA is superior to the IHA since it results inhigher productivity as well as more flexibility and reconfigurability.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University