HMS — Holonic Manufacturing Systems Test Case (IMS Project)

This paper surveys the activities and results of the IMS test case entitled: ‘Holonic Manufacturing Systems: System Components of Autonomous Modules and their Distributed Control.’ This one-year project (1993) covers a wide range of manufacturing systems, encompassing discrete, continuous and/or batch processing. It puts forward a new paradigm for manufacturing: the holonic manufacturing system.Currently, a European follow-up project is expected to start by the end of this year. Up-to-date information concerning the IMS/HMS project can be down-loaded from internet [1].