Design for the Unexpected: From Holonic Manufacturing Systems Towards a Humane Mechatronics Society presents new, even revolutionary, ideas to managing production and production systems which may fundamentally shift the paradigm of manufacturing systems design. It provides guidelines for the design of complex systems that can deal with unexpected disturbances and presents a decentralized control methodology that goes far beyond the traditional hierarchical control approach that currently prevails.

The benefits are illustrated by a variety of examples and case studies from different fields, with the book's  well-established authors presenting Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMS) as the framework for the ‘factory-of-the-future’, and suggesting that the application of biologically inspired control paradigms can control complex manufacturing systems, and that there are far wider applications for these systems than pure manufacturing. In addition, the book explores how this multi-agent control framework can be extended to other fields such as traffic, transport, services, and health care.