r-FrMS: a relation-driven fractal organisation for distributed manufacturing systems

Abstract

Up-to-date market dynamics and decentralisation have brought about the need of flexible and robust organisational structures for manufacturing resources. To meet the need of such an environment, the manufacturing system should be equipped with an open, reconfigurable and scalable organisational structure. This paper proposes a novel organisational model, referred to as a relation-driven fractal organisation, to meet the requirements. The proposed model applies the concept of a fractal to its organisational structure and adopts a relational pattern between composing entities as a basic building block for organising. In this paper, the existing fractal-like systems involved in manufacturing systems are investigated, and the fractal organisation is derived as their super-ordinate concept. Then, r-FrMS, a relation-driven fractal organisation applied into distributed manufacturing systems, is proposed along with its organising mechanism which adopts employment relations between manufacturing resources as its organising principle.