Control Architecture for Reconfigurable and Distributed Manufacturing System

Control systems for conventional manufacturing systems are designed based on division in scope and control problems organized into hierarchical levels such as, enterprise control, factory control, and shop-floor control. However, currently manufacturing systems must assure integration and reconfiguration flexibility characteristics, i.e., a reconfigurable manufacturing system must collaborate each other, combining a global vision with a relatively agile reaction to unexpected variations of the shop-floor control level or new businesses processes in enterprise and factory control levels. On the other hand, in a global market, control systems must also consider businesses processes of geographically distributed manufacturing systems to take advantages of local facilities. Holonic and Multi-Agent System (HMAS) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) techniques are effective to model control system of RDMS, but a formal method must also be considered to ensure this combination and a systematic application of design specifications. Therefore, this paper proposes models of control architecture for RDMS using bottom–up and top–down approaches through Petri net technique. This models extends a method to model a control system for RDMS based on combination of HMAS and SOA. Fault-tolerant control mechanisms and their application aspects are treated and an application example demonstrates advantages of this proposal, such as autonomy, flexibility, collaboration, reuse and robustness.