Real-Time Control of Distributed Large Scale Flexible Manufacturing

Due to the ever-increasing computational capabilities and the increasing use of automated manufacturing, distributed large-scale, discrete-event manufacturing system controllers are being proposed and designed. Currently there is a large amount of research in the area of simulation of manufacturing systems, scheduling and some research in the control of automated manufacturing plants. Even intelligent controllers for manufacturing systems have been looked at by some. To this date there has been no realization of a general-purpose intelligent controller for manufacturing systems such as a flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). Furthermore the current research efforts focusing on this problem are not considering the fact that the controller must be physically distributed among many computers in order to achieve the computer power necessary to control these large-scale complex systems. Since these manufacturing systems are physically distributed over potentially thousands of miles and therefore there control structure must be distributed as well. The implication is that the model used in the controller actually consists of a set of independent models. Very little research has focused on the design of a controller whose model is distributed. Even the very popular commercial simulation packages such, as Arena by Rockwell Software does not have the capability to handle multiple models and it certainly does not have any control features.