Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMSs), in which decisions are made through cooperation among holons (autonomous and cooperative manufacturing entities), eliminate various bottlenecks that exist in conventional systems to adapt to high-variety low-volume production. This paper describes the architecture of HMSs. Issues regarding incremental development and dynamic reconfiguration of cooperation mechanisms themselves, and mechanisms for ensuring stable and safe behaviors of HMSs are also discussed with reference to several proposals, with a view to applying the HMS architecture to large and complicated applications.

A series of transparent photochemical acid-generators (PAGs) has been successfully prepared and investigated to apply ArF excimer-laser lithography. These PAGs were synthesized as new alkylsulfonium salts that have cycloalkyl groups but no aromatic ones. They were almost transparent at 193. 4 nm and have high acid-generation efficiency enough to use for ArF excimer-laser resists. The photochemical reaction of these alkylsulfonium salts occurs mainly due to the S-C bond fission. A resist utilizing the PAGs was capable to resolve a 0. 2µm L/S pattern at a 50-mJ/cm2 dose with an aqueous alkaline developer. These PAGs are promising materials for use in ArF excimer-laser lithography.