Comparison of the bionic, fractal and holonic manufacturing system concepts

Over the next decade production will experience an enormous increase in variety and great reduction in batch sizes. Customers will have more individualistic desires and will participate in the design and production, and will be involved in details of services via electronic means. To meet these demands current organizations will be replaced by more innovative organic structures. One promising structure is a conglomerate of distributed and autonomous units which operate as a set of cooperating entities. In this respect, many new concepts are being proposed: bionic, fractal and holonic manufacturing. In this paper the underlying principles on which these concepts are based are described and their design and operational features compared. Also, a more concrete example of shop-floor application as envisaged by these concepts is provided.