In 1990, Dr. Yoshikawa, the President of Tokyo University laid the foundation for developing the next generation 21st century manufacturing paradigm through the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Group (www.ims.org).

The foundation of the breakthrough approach called Holonics was established. The science of Holonics brings quantifiable business benefits in cost, quality, delivery, responsiveness and stability in the face of disruption. Adaptability and flexibility is leveraged in the face of change while maintaining operational efficiency. Holonics displaces current business models for manufacturing. Corporate early adopters are realizing impressive savings through this approach (e.g., Rockwell International, Mercedes Benz).

Why are manufacturers doing this? Because they have anticipated, first through experiment, the business benefits with tangible ROI. Cost savings, increased margins, reduced overhead and more effective deployment of existing resources through this paradigm shift is a significant departure from traditional approaches. Holonics demands this paradigm change from current manufacturing processes, seen as a complex network of interactions and the subsystems of which they are a part.

In many operations that lack communications integration and visibility, reactions to unpredicted events are mainly driven by e-mails and frantic phone calls to engineering, purchasing or the shop floor. As a result, a lot of information is lost. Reports about yesterday’s events come too late or lack the detail necessary to support daily business decisions. Yet, in the “sense and respond“ environment of ideally run modern businesses, data generated by events as they occur offers the best basis for management decisions and actions, and more importantly, time is not lost.

Thus, if one could bi-directionally link what is happening on the shop floor with the business side, and then put events in a business context, decision-making will become much faster and enterprises will be able to fulfil customer demand, even if problems were not pinpointed earlier.

Holonics uses a systems thinking approach to operations analysis that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system will act differently when isolated from its environment or other parts of the system. Because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (the relationship between the parts is what should be under observation), any atomistic analysis is considered reductionistic.

There is a fundamental difference between systems theory approaches over divide and conquer strategies using single dimensional analytic approaches. It is impossible to isolate a sub-problem and solve the overall system problem.

Every system is an interaction of elements manifesting as a whole.

Many incumbent leaders are often not comfortable challenging current time-honored approaches. However, industry-wide surveys show that incremental changes to processes that are fundamentally constrained frequently yield disappointing results. This tends to deflate employee interest in seeking further performance gains. Even current Lean approaches can have disappointing results from lack of understanding of the true root causes and therefore lack appropriate responses. At some point CPI (Continuous Process Improvement) may become BPR, Business Process Reengineering. As competition evolves, and manufacturing capabilities plateau, the customers ultimately feel the resulting poor service levels. Some companies have learned to be paradigm pioneers and do not face these limitations. Others are wondering why performance is lacking. Holonics facilitates a leaner, more effective manufacturing business model founded on new science and a fresh approach.

Bulletproofing manufacturing business performance requires readdressing current operational models not tied to traditional methods. The consequence is innovative reinvention providing a better ROI. Leaders in the future will step outside the box to learn and embrace what Holonics will do for them.

R. Michael Mahoney

It is critical that leadership at the shop floor level be defined based on the ‘expertise’ of any individual selected. Any soft issues relating to people skills can be developed. Time horizons to develop real expertise are excessively long if people skills predominate as the overriding selection criteria. Real hands-on expertise is likely to never really be developed. Proper lead man selection criteria is fundamental to the development of a holonic manufacturing system. Typical present day capabilities of a shop leader include the following:

1. Organization in all aspects of the work to be performed (5S)

2. Establish Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

3. Keep in-touch with all people and issues. Go to them.

4. Advise workers on the proper tools, techniques and methods required

to perform work efficiently and effectively as required real-time.

5. Intensive focus on flow.

6. If a constraint condition arises, elevate the constraint.

7. Focus on the timeliness of 100% completion.

8. Set job execution time such that it is a stretch objective.

9. Advise rather than criticize poor performance.

10. Instill a sense of urgency

The evolution of manufacturing such that it attains the attributes of stability in the face of disturbances, adaptability and flexibility in the face of change and efficient use of available resources defines leadership requirements of the 21^st Century. Local entities where a lead man exists is a whole in and of itself but is a sub-whole to the overall system. Fixed rules for execution are provided via scheduling but when adaptation to real-world disturbances and change occur, the hierarchical schedule is rendered invalid unless sound response strategies are employed. Leadership of sub-whole operations is in the context that the sub-whole operation is linked to other sub-whole operations. Although a sub-whole operation has autonomy it has linkages to other sub-wholes which require cooperation amongst other entities (e.g., customer order service, stores, repair, etc.) within the global system. All sub-whole entities are thus wholes and parts and are simultaneously exhibiting autonomous and cooperative behavior. They are referred to as holons.

Bidirectional communication amongst holons is critical to effectively and efficiently respond to disturbance and change.

Fixed rules and flexible strategies comprise the behavior of sub-whole entities (i.e., holons). Under the condition of disturbance and change, the fixed rule to follow the schedule shifts the schedule from a commander to advisor. The rules of the game to respond to disturbance and change are comprised of heuristics. Heuristics provide expert advice. The ability of humans to optimize is limited and they are boundedly rational. Adaptation to asynchronous real-world disturbance and change as it occurs is an expectation. Response strategies and tactics to change and disruption and the system design required to facilitate it, are nowhere to be found in present day ‘lean’ lexicon. Humans define the heuristics and as such they are under control. Adaptation is executed in known ways while the evolution of adaptation tactics is facilitated. A holonic manufacturing system is an ‘open learning system’ to support its evolution, configuration and reconfiguration.

R. Michael Mahoney

Many manufacturers design products based on requirements and specifications provided by the customer. In this case, the engineering function is not an R&D environment per se. The scheduling of engineering resources is critical to minimizing lead-time to ensure time is not swallowed up in engineering with little time left to fabricate. The misallocation of engineering resources due to poor or non-existent scheduling can lead to a situation where lead time is artificially inflated and can result in a late customer delivery. Any developed schedule represents a constraint in-and-of-itself. Multiple schedules should be developed to leverage multiple engineers. A time buffer should be used to accommodate engineering variation as well as to facilitate preemptive design work with low work content time that may arrive on an ad hoc basis. Once the schedule is developed, engineers should consume the schedules as equally as possible in time–Multiple Constraint Synchronization (MCS™). It is important to note that the engineering design lead-time is not deterministic and design lead-time to engineer a particular item is difficult, if not impossible, to predict with high accuracy—particularly when the work content time is high (the item price is high). The price of the item is generally in proportion to the time required to design the item although some exception cases may exist. Design lead-time variation is also in proportion to the item price.

Let’s say you have developed a sound schedule with provision (a time buffer) to accommodate time variation when a disturbance or disruption occurs. Depending on the nature of the disturbance, the schedule can be rendered invalid from a lead-time standpoint. Therefore, scheduling alone is not enough. During the design process, a problem may be discovered that requires added expense (e.g., additional raw material) to resolve. The customer will need to be notified about this and upon her approval, quoting will need to be notified to re-quote. This series of events would require engineering to navigate communications outside the sphere of engineering (customer, quoting) and the design process would be placed on-hold until completely resolved. The lead-time clock is not stopped and still ticking. The due-date will have to be renegotiated through the customer order service function of demand management. Bidirectional communication with entities outside the sphere of engineering must be accommodated for with any scheduling approach. The what, when, where and why of the status for all scheduled items should be tracked and recorded. While the schedule represents the hierarchical advisor, the response strategy to disturbances and disruptions is handled heterarchically through bidirectional communications within and outside the locus of development engineering.

Engineering scheduling solutions should be both hierarchical (i.e., advisor) and heterarchical in their design—Holonic. Scheduling alone is necessary but insufficient. Heterarchical bidirectional communications is the organizational glue which facilitates excellent response time to disturbance and disruption as well as excellent customer service. Any other alternative is simply fire fighting or worse, a meandering from crisis to crisis.

R. Michael Mahoney

The fundamental operational dynamics for High-Mix, Low-Volume manufacturers are effectively managed when the system behavior exhibits the following three characteristics: cooperation, autonomy and self organization. The Holonic Manufacturing System (HMS) design process produces different distinct views of the HMS in order to capture the richness inherent of such a system.

The five views of the HMS are:

1. Environment model
2. Organization model
3. Interaction model
4. Task/goal model
5. Holon model

The Holonic Manufacturing System design starts with an analysis based on these five views. UML (Unified Modeling Language) is the tool of preference. The Use Case Model is based on system requirements. Attaching Use Cases associated with the Use Case Model is a simplification of the overall system and collectively will define the overall system.

The interaction amongst entities defined in the Use Case Model and their relationship facilitate the construction of the interaction and organization models. The next step is to identify the holons linked to the system requirement. At this point, the capabilities and responsibilities of the holons are analyzed in terms of tasks and goals and the Task/Goal model is then created. The holon specification should be defined in detail. Holons will interact with non-autonomous entities from which the Environmental Model is developed.

The Pre- and Post-condition for each holon are defined and any dependencies requiring cooperation are identified. This refining process is developed with the higher-level Organization Model. This bottoms-up design process of refinement continues until there is no higher level of cooperation relevant. Building the system architecture is the final step. A unique notation comprised of sixteen artifacts is used to graphically portray the global system. The design of the HMS is a tops-down, bottoms-up approach that effectively models autonomy and cooperation for the global system. This is in stark contrast to the ‘subsystem’ approach typical of the divide-and-conquer lean techniques used today.

Holonics provides a key competitive edge in a world where the problems are complex. Cooperation, adaptation, agility and flexibility are fundamental to responding to today’s challenges where disturbance and change are the norm and efficiency cannot be sacrificed. Customers are the big dog in the tall weeds today and customer loyalty is rare. Those who are able to deliver what, when, where and how the customer wants it, win! Holonics provides a significant breakthrough and paradigm shift for companies seeking to differentiate themselves in the marketplace now.

R. Michael Mahoney

Organizational communication is fundamental to high-mix manufacturing success. At the human holon level, communications are typically of the form: request, reply and inform. To have dialog amongst collaborative holons, human-system interfaces are required. Interface applications within a cooperative holonic domain are relatively simple, and decision support criteria will look like it comes from a single application.

Cooperative domains are highly distributed, autonomous and cooperative. An example of a strong heterarchy is real-time Internet chat amongst engineers. Heterarchical control is most effectively initiated by a triggering mechanism, e.g., machine breakdown, stockout, etc. for a manufacturing production environment. All users see the same state “real time.” Triggering is initiated after a disturbance or disruption occurs and the response strategy is communication to the entity(ies) capable of mitigating the problem quickly. Decision support would be provided to the holon responding. Decision support is comprised of heuristics to aid in the decision-taking process – a pseudo expert system. The critical importance of mobilizing heterarchy cannot be overstated. To ensure efficiency is maintained, heterarchy increasingly trumps hierarchy as complexity and rate of change increase.

The power of heterarchy can be analogized to the behaviors of the ant kingdom. Simple creatures following simple rules, each one acting on local information. This heterarchical behavior forms the foundation of what is called swarm intelligence, i.e., decentralized self-organizing systems. No centralized control structure dictates how individual holons should behave. The collective behaviors of holons interacting locally cause coherent global benefits to emerge. The triggers and response tactics incorporated act to preserve advice given globally; for example, a production plan.

Consider a situation where a disturbance occurs at a process step. This trigger will cause the local holon experiencing the disruption to inform the production manager holon. The production manager holon will ask for a time estimate to recover from the disruption. If production was suspended, the local holon would have triggered the engineering holon as well as the production manager holon that production was suspended. If the due date cannot be met, the production manager holon will contact customer order service and customer order service may relax the due date or contact the customer directly. The production manager holon may minimally modify the current schedule to minimize the disturbance’s impact on orders in queue yet to be produced.

The rules-of-the-game are embedded in canons which are comprised of heuristics. Canons contain expert advice that facilitates some of the following characteristics for the holons with which they are associated; self organization, system optimization, cooperation, intelligence, forecasting and even considerateness.

Although there is a plethora of information available about automation exhibiting holonic behavior and test cases abound, this is is not a necessary requirement.

R. Michael Mahoney

The 2007-05-02 issue of USA Today features an article titled “Toyota’s success pleases proponents of lean”. The popularity of lean manufacturing today has come almost entirely from Toyota’s success. http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2007-05-02-toyota-lean-usat_N.htm

However, the article goes on to state that a survey by management consulting firm Bain shows that only 19% of companies that have tried lean are happy with it. While there are a number of barriers to success in using lean, one clear problem is that the challenges faced by high-mix manufacturing are not adequately addressed by low-mix techniques of Toyota-based lean approaches.

The buzzword lean often encapsulates cellular, group technology, balancing capacity, load leveling, kanban and tact time concepts. These concepts will not and cannot deliver value to high-mix manufacturers excepting setup-time reduction, kanban and 5S (i.e., orderliness and cleanliness). For high-mix manufacturers, it is likely that few of these companies that have tried Toyota Production System–based Lean (Lean-TPS) are happy with it. When the concepts are implemented, they are often weak approximations of Lean-TPS or true implementation is impossible to achieve at all. Most of the problem emanates from highly volatile incoming order dynamics unique to high-mix manufacturing.

The fundamental operational dynamics for high-mix manufacturing requires a different approach that TPS-Lean is ill equipped to address. In the original translation of the book, “Toyota Production System from Industrial Engineering Viewpoint”, it states that the TPS Kanban system, “…could only be adapted only in the case of ‘repetitive production’ and impossible to utilize for individual production.”

For high-mix manufacturing, a systems-based approach is essential. 21^st century state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques are based on the science called holonics. Holonics is a systems-based approach which provides stability in the face of disturbances, delivers adaptability and flexibility in the face of change while maintaining efficiency, and facilitates agility.

Each of the key areas of manufacturing is approached within the overall holonics systems architecture approach. A complete understanding of MRP and its proper setup and use is fundamental to attaining a lean inventory position. Capacity planning and synchronized scheduling methodology enables efficiency and high throughput. Tactical alignment with strategic goals is a must for achieving superior levels of responsiveness and delivery performance.

The high-mix, low volume environment benefits from a holonics architecture rather than a TPS-Lean model. Proper modeling of the overall organizational architecture coupled with an operational model and communications strategy and tactics is the recipe for attaining competitive advantage. Holonics delivers that competitive advantage today for high-mix manufacturers.

R. Michael Mahoney