Software systems used in manufacturing control (especially the flexible manufacturing systems or some parts CIM) often have an architecture possessing many advantageous software engineering properties. Some techniques related to the architecture called software confederation (e.g. interface stability and incremental development) are discussed. Surprisingly enough the architecture of software co...

Field Server (FS) is a rugged server which can be installed in fields. Field Monitoring Server (FMS) is a kind of FS for monitoring. So far, solar cell embedded on the top of FMSs have been used only as a light intensity sensors. The power source for FMS is supplied by a cable, since the solar cell's power alone is not sufficient to run conventional FMSs. To construct a massively distributed mo...

Highly flexible manufacturing systems require continuous run-time (self-) optimization of processes with respect to diverse parameters, e.g., efficiency, availability, energy consumption etc. A promising approach for achieving (self-) optimization in manufacturing systems is the usage of the context sensitivity approach based on data streaming from high amount of sensors and other data sources....

Cloud manufacturing is defined as a relationship between the consumer and a flexible array of production services, managed by an intervening architecture that can match service providers to product and manufacturing processes Cloud manufacturing definitions typically make explicit or imply three groups of actors: consumers, who request and use cloud manufacturing processes; application provider...

Knowledge based or Intelligent Control of Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) means a continuous or frequent observation and evaluation of the status and condition of the system performance, decision making based on the evaluation results and on pre-defined knowledge, and then the operation according to the decisions. This kind of process is applied if any kind of disturbance or irregularity h...

this paper discusses the simulation study carried out for proposing one-piece lean line layout with features of lean manufacturing. the lean initiatives that can be addressed are, introducing kanban replenishment sys-tem, better work-in-process, changing the layout, visual management techniques, standardized work for the re-duction of cycle time, number of workers, number of setups. to improve ...

The combination of multi-functional machines and mobile robots supports the emergence of highly flexible intelligent manufacturing systems (IMS). In this kind of manufacturing system, some machines must stay fixed at previously established positions (heavy equipment) but some types of multi-functional machines (small flexible equipment and mobile robots) can stay in one position for one or seve...

market is forcing car manufacturers rethink their strategic approach to manufacturing. In order to be competitive, companies need to manufacture variety of new car models at the lowest cost. This requires manufacturing systems to be flexible to accommodate product variations and economically viable. Automotive industry has been traditionally highly automated and not particularly flexible in ter...

The paper presents problems arising during developing algorithms controlling workpiece flow subsystems in a flexible manufacturing system. The necessary signals as well as the general algorithm responsible for worpiece flow in a flexible manufacturing system were defined. On the basis of a structure of a flexible manufacturing system developed at the Institute of Manufacturing Engineering of Sz...

In this paper, a Markov chain model is introduced to study quality in flexible manufacturing systems with batch productions. To improve the quality performance in such systems, we introduce the notions of quality improvability and bottleneck sequence. A flexible system is improvable in terms of quality with respect to sequencing if there exists another sequence which renders better quality. In ...