Holons and agents

The future of the manufacturing sector in the world will be determined by how it meets the challenges of the 21st century. Two paradigms promise to meet these challenges, multi-agent systems (MAS) and holonic system (HS). Currently, there is some misunderstanding about the relationships between these two approaches. The aim of this work is to make a study of all the characteristics of the HS and the MAS approach, in order to illustrate a comprehensive comparison of holons and agents, and, at the same time, to present a survey about the main research works in both areas.