This paper describes a mechanism to ensure safe behaviors of Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMSs). The change from low-variety highvolume to high-variety low-volume production requires highly flexible and adaptive manufacturing systems. HMSs, in which decisions are made through cooperation among holons (autonomous and cooperative manufacturing entities), fulfill this requirement by exploiting full abilities of individual elements while eliminating various bottlenecks that exist in conventional systems. However, highly adaptive features induce non-deterministic behaviors of systems, and this makes it difficult to adopt HMSs as primary bases of manufacturing systems. In order to apply HMSs to large and complicated applications, mechanisms that make HMS behaviors more predictable are essential. An HMS safety ensuring mechanism proposed here is one of the attempts to make HMSs more predictable.
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