Definition
In order to respond to rapidly changing environment and market, it is imperative to have such capabilities as flexibility, adaptability, reusability, etc. for the manufacturing system. The fractal manufacturing system is one of the new manufacturing paradigms for this purpose. A basic component of fractal manufacturing system, called a basic fractal unit (BFU), consists of five functional modules such as an observer, an analyzer, an organizer, a resolver, and a reporter. Each module autonomously cooperates and negotiates with others while processing its jobs by using the agent technology. The resulting architecture has a high degree of self-similarity, one of the main characteristics of the fractal. What this actually means in this case is something that when you look at a part of it, it is similar to the whole object.
