Developing control and integration software for flexible manufacturing systems

The slow growth of computer-integrated manufacturing is attributed to the complexity of designing and implementing their control and integration software. This article expands on a methodology for designing and implementing this software that was introduced in [16]. The goal of this methodology is to build flexible and reusable control and integration software for computer-integrated manufacturing systems. It hinges upon the concepts of software/hardware components, their assemblages, a distributed common language environment, formad models, and generic controllers. Major sources of flexibility are obtained by decoupling process plan models from the model of the factory floor and by using a generic controller. Reusability is achieved by building selfcontained software/hardware components with general, possibly parametrized, interfaces. The interplay between simulated and actual hardware internals of software/hardware components is used as the basis of a testing strategy that performs off-line simulation followed by on-line testing. The methodology has been applied in designing and implementing the control and integration software of an actual Prismatic Machining Cell. The article also reports on the details of this implementation.