Distributed, Autonomous Control in Production of Jet Turbine Parts

An industrial prototype of a distributed, autonomous shop floor control system (HolMS) has been developed based on the PROSA reference architecture for holonic manufacturing systems. The HolMS system challenges the concept of visual control as prescribed by the Kanban mechanism in the Toyota Production System. Instead, it applies a market oriented service request/service offer bidding mechanism. A basic premise for obtaining this on the shop floor is that the different processing units are able to communicate. This has been accomplished by developing OPC UA wrappers for all the CNCs, robot cells and tracking devices involved. The HolMS prototype has been demonstrated at the jet turbine vane department of GKN Aerospace Norway.