Journal of Materials Processing Technology 139 (2003) 267272

A holonic architecture of the concurrent integrated

process planning system
Jie Zhang a , Liang Gao b , Felix T.S. Chan c, , Peigen Li b
b

a CIM Research Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
c Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, The University of Hong Kong,
Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China

Abstract
This paper describes a conceptual architecture of applying holon to process planning (PP) for integrating design, PP, and shop floor
scheduling so that a concurrent integrated process planning system (CIPPS) is constructed. The problem in PP has been mapped onto a
holonic architecture based on multistage cooperation. A holonic architecture for CIPPS integrates all the activities of PP into a distributed
intelligent open environment. Holons for CIPPS can be organized dynamically, and cooperate with each other to perform an appointed
task flexibly. In addition, using CORBA technology, a prototype system of the CIPPS is implemented.
2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Process planning; CAD; Production scheduling; Integration; Holon; CORBA

1. Introduction
Traditionally, the activities of product design, process
planning (PP) and shop floor scheduling are viewed as
discrete stages in manufacturing enterprise and developed,
respectively, into automation systems. However, decisions
taken in one stage affect the decision in downstream stages
[1]. Computer aided PP has been recognized as playing a
key role in computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) that
integrates these islands of automation. It forms an imperative connection between design and manufacturing operations in CIM. However, most of the PP is generated without
consideration of real-time dynamic status information in the
shop floor, and assumes an infinite capacity of resources on
the shop floor, and usually a factory is empty without any
work-in-progress when assigning resources to jobs [2,3].
These assumptions lead to the repeated commitment of
certain popular resources to numerous process plans [4,5].
Over the past two decades, considerable efforts have been
expended in developing integrated computer aided design
(CAD) and computer aided manufacturing functionalities.
Based on the philosophy of concurrent engineering (CE), a
concurrent integrated process planning system (CIPPS) is
proposed in this paper to integrate CAD, PP, and production
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ftschan@hkucc.hku.hk (F.T.S. Chan).

scheduling system (PSS) so that it is expected to significantly enhance the ability of manufacturing companies to
adapt efficiently to changing conditions, and yield significant performance improvements (e.g., shorter lead times,
increased resource utilization, enhanced due-date performance and coordination between customers and suppliers).
In order to implement CIPPS, a holonic architecture is
presented, which has characteristics such as distribution, autonomy, interaction, and openness to meet the requirement
of CIMS.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2
proposes a concurrent integrated PP model. Section 3 describes a conceptual architecture of applying holons to PP
for integrating design, PP, and production scheduling. The
needed holons are defined. Section 4 describes the cooperation between holons. Using CORBA technology, the CIPP
prototype system is constructed in Section 5. Section 6 is
the conclusions.

2. Concurrent integrated PP model

CE is an important method of the integration from information to function for CIMS, and an overall optional method
for the complicated manufacturing systems. A problem in
the traditional product development cycle is that the communication between different perspectives is linear in nature.

0924-0136/03/$ see front matter 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0924-0136(03)00233-4

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Fig. 1. PP model.

This may lead to long and costly development cycles as

design mistakes are often not discovered until downstream
stages of product development. In contrast to the traditional
sequential approach to design and manufacturing, CE advocates a rapid, simultaneous approach, where concept development, design, manufacturing, and support are carried out
in parallel [6]. This approach prompts developers, from the
outset, to consider all the relevant element of product life cycle from conception to disposal, including quality, cost, schedule, and user requirements [7]. From the implementation
point of view, the CE paradigm can be viewed as an integration of functional software tools. Based on the philosophy
of CE, in this paper an integrated PP system is proposed to
integrate CAD, PP, and PSS. It can provide not only a tool
for the early stage of design but can also reach nearly an optional process plan by working with PP and PSS in parallel.
PP involves multistage decision making so that its tasks
may be divided into three levels, namely initial planning
level, decision making level, and detailed planning level to
complete the task of PP. The activities with each level take
place in different time periods, as shown in Fig. 1. Initial
planning should be executed in a very early stage, e.g., as
soon as the product design is finished. Initial planning level
generates a serial of alternative processing routes of part
based on processing potential in the shop floor. Decision
making is executed in a later stage, i.e., when the orders have
been released to the shop. In the decision making level, one
suitable process plan can be selected for a part from alternative process plans generated in the initial planning level
based on the current status of the shop floor. The detailed
planning is executed just before manufacturing begins. The
detailed planning level generates a detail PP for the process
route by the decision making level. The interaction between
PP and CAD takes place in the first level, but the interaction
between PP and production scheduling takes place in all the
three levels (Fig. 1).

autonomy, interaction, and openness to meet the requirement of CIMS. The holonic manufacturing system (HMS)
consortium introduced holonic as a hierarchical architecture of self-consistent, cooperating modules. A holon is
autonomous and co-operative and sometimes intelligent. It
can be made up of other holons. Thus, holon means simultaneously a whole and a part of the whole. This feature distinguishes holons from agents. Sousa and Ramos [8] introduce
a dynamic scheduling holon for manufacturing orders.
From software engineering point of view, holons can be
thought of as a natural extension to object-oriented programming. Each holon has its own thread of control, and
runs independently of the other holons. Holons interact
among themselves by sending and receiving messages, but
the messages are not in the form of function calls. It is possible to multicast a message to a group of holons, and each
recipient holon is free to ignore a message or deal with it
at a later stage. Using the holon conception, a complicated
system can be divided into different and efficient holons
that are more realizable. By this way, the flexibility, expandability and stability of the CIPPS are improved. In order to
implement a holonic architecture for CIPPS, the first task is
to partition the holons in a system. The principles of division
mainly lie in function grouping and sizing. Different functional modules will be grouped into different holons. However, the size of a holon cannot be too large or too small. If
it is too large, it will be insufficiently configurable and difficult to change. If it is too small, it will need to define more
interface messages and will be more difficult to integrate.
According to the above principles and a new PP model
(as shown in Fig. 1), the CIPPS is partitioned into several
holons, such as task holon, initial planning, decision holon,
detailed holon, etc. These holons can be mapped to different
functions and objects of the PP. They can be organized dynamically, and perform flexibly and cooperatively the task
of PP.
3.2. Holonic architecture

3. Holonic architecture for CIPPS

3.1. Applying holon to PP
In order to implement CIPPS, a holonic architecture is
presented, which has characteristics such as distribution,

Holonic architectures are robust and dynamic; they can

quickly react to unexpected events, and adapt to changing
conditions. They are inherently distributed and scaleable:
more holons and more computers can be added as necessary
to increase the performance or the capacity of a system.

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269

Fig. 2. Holonic architecture of CIPPS.

Compared to centralized systems, holonic architectures are

easy to maintain, modify, and extend as the requirements
from the system change and grow with time. Therefore,
holonic architecture can be used to construct a CIPPS.
Holonic architecture for CIPPS, as shown in Fig. 2,
consists of an initial planning holon, a decision making
holon, a detailed planning holon, a task holon, a resource
holon, a C/P coordination holon, and a P/P coordination
holon. It integrates all the activities of PP into a distributed
intelligent open environment. Holons cooperate with each
other to implement system functionality. All the holons
work together to solve the whole PP problem cooperatively.
Koestler [9] used the term holarchy to describe holonic
hierarchies. Based on the PP model (Fig. 1), the holonic
architecture of CIPPS is, respectively, divided into three
holarchies, namely, initial planning, decision making, and
detailed planning. They are employed to perform the specified PP task in the three different levels. Each holarchy is
made up of many holons.
Some of the basic holons are defined as follows.
The task holon. To automatically generate process plans
from a CAD, a task holon is needed to animate human
geometric reasoning capabilities in order to transfer design
data into manufacturing specific semantic information. The
task holon accepts product models, and translates them into
the CIPPS internal shared common model. The task holon
knows about its work material, due date, and penalty for
lateness. When the design information has been properly
interpreted, the task holon will trigger the initial planning
holon to create a process plan for manufacturing the designed part. Because PP is divided into three different levels, the decision sequencing and flow of control in CIPPS
is controlled by the task holon.
The C/P coordination holon. It provides an open and uniform coordination between CAD and PP systems. It supports customizable functionalities that enable the user at the
initial planning level within the PP model to interactively
manipulate and evaluate product design while selectively
coordinating the requirement of the initial planning holon.
On the other hand, when designing a new product, the CAD
designer can inquire of the related manufacturing process

information by C/P coordination, to ensure product manufacturability and profitability.

The P/P coordination holon. It provides an open and
uniform coordination between PP and PSS in all the three
PP levels. It supports customizable functionalities that enable the user at all the three planning levels to interactively
manipulate and evaluate alternative PP and final PP while
selectively coordinating the requirement of the production
scheduling holon. The holonic architecture of CIPPS aims
at providing a framework for coordinated development and
manipulation of PP.
The resource holon. It is shared in the PP system and
the PSS. It provides the resource information in the current
manufacturing environment.
The initial planning holon. It is the core at the initial planning holarchy. It cooperates with other holons to finish the
task at the initial planning holarchy. The data of the input to
the initial planning holon consists of two types. One of them
is the product model from a design system that represents the
geometrical shape of the product, design tolerances, surface
requirement, and the properties of the material. The other
one is the resource information from the PSS. The task of
the initial planning holon is to seek all feasible operations by
part information and resource information. This means that
the initial planning holon does not carry out the complete
PP, instead it generates many feasible blocks that consist of
feasible processes based on individual operations. A block is
generally manufactured on an individual machine unless it
is mass type production. Therefore, the output of the initial
planning holon is a series of the blocks. These blocks are assigned to each machine based on feedback from production
scheduling. In fact, all these alternative blocks form the alternative process plans. Another task of the initial planning
holon is manufacturing evaluation as a tool for the designer.
The designer can use the tool to check the manufacturing feasibility and cost of alternative designs. Thus, designers can
modify their designs so that they are manufacturable and cost
effective in terms of the current shop floor environment. The
manufacturing evaluations produced by CIPPS can be contrasted to other approaches in that its evaluations are based
not only on the design (namely process capabilities that can

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be described by the part shape, dimensions, tolerances, surface finish, geometric and technological constraints, and economics of a process), but also on information on the shop
floor resources. Shop floor resources greatly affect the manufacturability analysis. A design may be manufacturable under one set of shop floor resources, but not index another.
The decision making holon in the CIPPS. It is the core of
the entire system. One of the important activities between PP
and production scheduling is how to select machines based
on the real-time shop floor states. The decision making holon
matches the required job operations with the operation capabilities of the available production resource. It is dynamically
constrained and requires a close link to the PSS. Once the
current shop floor information is obtained, the process plans
are constructed at the last minute when the job is about to
be loaded to the shop floor. The task of the decision making
holon is to decide an optimal PP from alternative processing routes that are generated by the initial planning holon.
The decision making holon first lists all the possible process
plans; then based on the real-time machine status which is
provided by the resource holon and certain criteria, such as
minimize manufacturing cost and minimize manufacturing
lead time, calculates their manufacturing cost or manufacturing lead time; lastly, it selects the process plan with least
manufacturing cost or least manufacturing lead time. An optimal process plan will eventually be transmitted to the PSS.
The detailed planning holon. It is executed just before
the beginning of manufacturing. It will generate the detail
PP, which includes selecting the cutting speed, feed rate,
etc., and calculating machining time, programming the NC
program for each operation of processing route generated
by the decision making holon. The output of the detailed
planning holon is an entire document of PP to be sent to the
shop floor to guide the production.
In addition to the holonic system having some common
characteristics such as distribution, autonomy, interaction,

and openness, the architecture possesses some other characteristics as follows:

1. Reconfiguration. It supports easy reconfiguration to
accommodate the introduction of new manufacturing
environment.
2. Customization. It supports customizable functionalities that enable user at all the three planning levels to
interactively manipulate PP.
3. Hybridization. It is hybrid architecture that is composed
of the peer-to-peer relationships (task holon with initial planning holon) and the hierarchical relationships
between holons (such as between planning holons).
4. Cooperation between holons
A holonic system provides a cooperation mechanism between the different autonomous intelligent entities. Different
holons are designed according to the intelligent model of different functions. When the prerequisites are satisfied, these
holons execute tasks defined by designer in a dynamic environment so as to response continuously the change of manufacturing conditions and production tasks. These holons in
CIPPS can be organized dynamically, and cooperate with
each other to perform an appointed task flexibly. Negotiation
is the key activity when holons cooperate one another. Cooperation between holons mainly concentrates on the three
aspects: PP with CAD and PSS, the initial planning holarchy,
and decision making holarchy. Cooperation between CAD,
PP, and the PSS is illustrated in Fig. 3. The initial planning
holon cooperates with the task holon, the C/P coordination
holon, the resource holon, and the P/P coordination holon to
finish together the task at the initial planning holarchy and
implement the integration with CAD and PSS. The cooperation model between holons in the initial planning holarchy
is shown in Fig. 4. The decision making holon cooperates

Fig. 3. Cooperation between CAD, PP, and PSS.

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271

Fig. 4. Cooperation in initial planning holarchy.

Fig. 5. Cooperation in the decision making holarchy.

with task holon, resource holon, and P/P coordination holon

to finish together the task at the decision making holarchy
and implement the integration of PP and scheduling system
in the decision making holarchy. The cooperation model
between holons in the decision making holarchy is shown
in Fig. 5.

5. Implementing CIPPS
One of the major goals of establishing the concurrent integrated PP prototype system is the enabling of application
integration by providing services of sharing data and syn-

chronizing the operation of applications. CORBA based architecture of the CIPP prototype system is shown in Fig. 6,
which provides an organized environment for running a collection of holons in CIPPS. The architecture helps the user
to integrate the software holon and other applications. Each
holon can be located in a different machine or the same machine, or runs on a different operating system, depending on
the requirements of CIPPS application in the real environment, is shown in Fig. 6. The decision making holon can
be installed with the PSS in the PIII Two computer. Other
holons can be located in the PIII One computer. All the
holons work together to solve the entire PP problem cooperatively. An initial prototype of CIPPS has been developed,

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J. Zhang et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 139 (2003) 267272

Fig. 6. The architecture of a CIPP prototype system.

and the system is currently undergoing further refinement

and evaluation.

integration within a heterogeneous, wide-area networked

enterprise.

6. Conclusions

Acknowledgements

A problem in the traditional product development cycle

is that the communication between different perspectives is
linear in nature. This would lead to long and costly development cycles as design mistakes are often not discovered
until the downstream stages of product development. This
paper proposes a CIPP system. An initial testing phase of
the CIPP prototype system has been completed in close collaboration with an industrial partner with very encouraging
results. It is shown, first, to provide a tool for CAD by integrating downstream constraints into the design phase so
that the need for redesign (due to design mistakes) later can
be reduced in the product development cycle. Secondly, it
integrates PP and production scheduling so that the CIPPS
provides a process plan that optimizes due-date performance
while minimizing manufacturing cost or lead time by taking
into account alternative process plans and the real-time resource status in shop floor. Thirdly, it responds continuously
to manufacturing conditions and production task changes
with the help of these holons that can be organized dynamically, and cooperate with each other to perform an appointed
task flexibly. Therefore, the development of holonic architecture for CIPPS satisfies the requirements of agile manufacturing: rapid response to changing requirement; reduction
in both time and cost of the product realization process; and

This work was supported by the National Nature Science

Foundation of China under grants 59885004, 59990470 and
59889505.
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