Cooperation between a Holonic Schedule Execution System and the i2 Factory Planner

The paper presents an experimental study of holonic schedule execution. The output from industry-strength scheduling software is used as an initial schedule to be executed by an HMES (Holonic Manufacturing Execution System) (Valckenaers, 2005). This Holonic Manufacturing Execution System compensates for possible simplifications in the schedule. The experiments show an improved performance when using this initial schedule as a guideline. In addition, the experiments also reveal the need to extend the HMES capabilities so it interprets the schedule more intelligently and, simultaneously, assist the user while analyzing the results of the experiments.