An object-oriented model for FMS control

The flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a distributed network of heterogeneous programmable manufacturing machinery, such as assembly lines and numerically controlled machines. Despite these interconnected, programmable hardware elements, the success of building a truly flexible manufacturing system has been limited so far, owing to the lack of flexibility in its control software layer. In integrating heterogeneous machinery, many existing FMS control software systems depend structurally on specific machinery and job-scheduling strategies, and thus it is difficult to incorporate new developments in FMS organization and operational requirements. In searching for an open architecture for the FMS control software system, this paper presents an object-oriented FMS data model. Among others, it represents each physical cluster of related machinery (called a flexible manufacturing cell) as an object. To facilitate the integration of heterogeneous physical cells, such cell objects share a common protocol of interacting with the main control process through inheritance from the abstract cell class. Other related physical and abstract entities in FMS are also modelled as objects, with their similarity and difference captured in inheritance hierarchies. To verify the proposed approach experimentally, a prototype FMS control software system named FREE (FMS Runtime Executive Environment) has been implemented on top of a commercial object-oriented database system.     

Taguchi's Method Analysis of an FMS Under Review-Period-Based Operational Controls: Identification of Control Periodicity

Flexibility of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) has been considered as an effective tool to compete in the present manufacturing environment. Enormous research efforts have been made to harness the benefits of flexibility through superior control strategies. While modeling flexibility and control strategies, researchers have mostly assumed an information system that can provide real-time control. Literature qualitatively reports that the real-time control can be highly capital intensive and difficult to achieve. This paper focuses on FMS operating under review-period (RP)-based control and presents a combined study of routing flexibility (RF), control strategies, and information system under Taguchi's method using simulation. RP-based control for FMS has been compared with real-time control. This paper contributes an approach for the decision maker to study the performance of an FMS operating under RP control and to identify the periodicity (time interval) of RP that will not deteriorate its performance in comparison to real-time control. It also helps the decision maker to reach a tradeoff between RP-based control and real-time control. The results show that RP-based control can be effectively implemented on an FMS having lower RF level. RP-based control can outperform real-time control with a superior control strategy and smaller RP size. The results under Taguchi's method suggest that the RF and control strategy should have maximum relative percentage contributions in FMS performance, whereas contribution of the RP (information system) should be minimum. Increasing the relative percentage contribution of the information system may deteriorate the performance of FMS. The information system is needed as a catalyst to facilitate the contributions of other factors in improving the FMS performance and not its own contribution     

A heuristic based on multi-stage programming approach for machine-loading problem in a flexible manufacturing system

Manufacturing industries are rapidly changing from economies of scale to economies of scope, characterized by short product life cycles and increased product varieties. This implies a need to improve the efficiency of job shops while still maintaining their flexibility. These objectives are achieved by Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). The basic aim of FMS is to bring together the productivity of flow lines and the flexibility of job shops. This duality of objectives makes the management of an FMS complex. In this article, the loading problem in random type FMS, which is viewed as selecting a subset of jobs from the job pool and allocating them among available machines, is considered. A heuristic based on multi-stage programming approach is proposed to solve this problem. The objective considered is to minimize the system unbalance while satisfying the technological constraints such as availability of machining time and tool slots. The performance of the proposed heuristic is tested on 10 sample problems available in FMS literature and compared with existing solution methods. It has been found that the proposed heuristic gives good results.     

Genetic algorithms for match-up rescheduling of the flexible manufacturing systems

Scheduling plays a vital role in ensuring the effectiveness of the production control of a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). The scheduling problem in FMS is considered to be dynamic in its nature as new orders may arrive every day. The new orders need to be integrated with the existing production schedule immediately without disturbing the performance and the stability of existing schedule. Most FMS scheduling methods reported in the literature address the static FMS scheduling problems. In this paper, rescheduling methods based on genetic algorithms are described to address arrivals of new orders. This study proposes genetic algorithms for match-up rescheduling with non-reshuffle and reshuffle strategies which accommodate new orders by manipulating the available idle times on machines and by resequencing operations, respectively. The basic idea of the match-up approach is to modify only a part of the initial schedule and to develop genetic algorithms (GAs) to generate a solution within the rescheduling horizon in such a way that both the stability and performance of the shop floor are kept. The proposed non-reshuffle and reshuffle strategies have been evaluated and the results have been compared with the total-rescheduling method.     

Flexibility performance: Taguchi's method study of physical system and operating control parameters of FMS

In present manufacturing environment, the manufacturing flexibility has become one of the strategic competitive tools. Flexibility refers to the availability of alternative resources. These resources may have varied parameters, particularly related to physical and operating system. These physical and operating parameters of alternative resources may influence the system's performance with the changing levels of flexibility and operational control parameters such as scheduling rules. Is increase in a flexibility level provides desired improved performance output? If yes, than under what conditions of physical and operating parameters and under which control strategy (CS)? Is improved performance is present at all increasing levels of flexibility? Flexible manufacturing system (FMS) being consist of numerous physical and operating parameters and complex in nature, the solution to these questions can provide an understanding of the productive levels of flexibility for a given physical and operating parameters of an FMS. This paper establishes the need of modelling of the physical and operating parameters of flexible manufacturing system along with flexibility and presents a simulation study under Taguchi's method analysis of these parameters. The paper contributes an approach to study the impact of variations in physical and operating parameters of an FMS and to identify the level of these variations that do not restrict the advantages of flexibility. The results show that the expected benefits from increasing the levels of flexibility and a superior CS may not be achieved if the physical and operating parameters of alternative machines have variations. Taguchi's method analysis indicates that relative percentage contribution of variations in physical and operating parameters of alternative resources should be negligible or minimum in the performance of FMS. Their increasing relative contribution may restrict the advantages of flexibility. If these variations are higher than increase in flexibility level may be counter productive.     

Modeling and control of workstation level information flow in FMS using modified Petri nets

A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) has a traditional structure of three levels: cell, workstation, and equipment. The workstation level plays an important role in the overall performance of the FMS. This paper focuses on modeling and control of the FMS workstation level information flow. In order to have a unified workstation level system structure, front-end interfaces are introduced as a standard communication medium between the workstation level and the equipment level. A detailed information flow analysis is then carried out on the workstation level. For modeling purposes, a modified Petri net is proposed with its increased modeling capability over an ordinary Petri net. It associates data structures with places and programs with transitions. Finally, the modified Petri net is used to model and control the FMS workstation level information flow. The designed control system has been implemented in a real manufacturing factory with satisfactory performance.     

A simulation analysis of part launching and order collection decisions for a flexible manufacturing system

In a dynamic flexible manufacturing system (FMS) environment jobs arrive randomly, and in most of the existing studies the due date for a single part is set individually. However, when the due date is set for an order that consists of multiple parts, some completed parts may have to wait for the rest of the order to be completed. This paper studied the scheduling problem in the FMS in which orders require the completion of different parts in various quantities. The orders arrive randomly and continuously, and all have predetermined due dates. Two scheduling decisions were considered in this study: launching parts into the system for production, and determining the order sequence for collecting the completed parts. A new part-launching rule, named the Tardiness Estimating Method (TEM) was proposed. A discrete-event simulation model of the FMS was developed and used as a test-bed for experiments under various system conditions. The proposed part launch rule was capable of providing good performance regarding minimum mean tardiness and maximum service level, but provided only a moderate flow time when compared with the other five rules commonly used in the literature. In addition, three order collection rules were tested in the experiments. Collecting parts for the order with the earliest due date (EDD) was found better than the other rules for tardiness related measures.     

FMS scheduling with knowledge based genetic algorithm approach

In this paper a complex scheduling problem in flexible manufacturing system (FMS) has been addressed with a novel approach called knowledge based genetic algorithm (KBGA). The literature review indicates that meta-heuristics may be used for combinatorial decision-making problem in FMS and simple genetic algorithm (SGA) is one of the meta-heuristics that has attracted many researchers. This novel approach combines KB (which uses the power of tacit and implicit expert knowledge) and inherent quality of SGA for searching the optima simultaneously. In this novel approach, the knowledge has been used on four different stages of SGA: initialization, selection, crossover, and mutation. Two objective functions known as throughput and mean flow time, have been taken to measure the performance of the FMS. The usefulness of the algorithm has been measured on the basis of number of generations used for achieving better results than SGA. To show the efficacy of the proposed algorithm, a numerical example of scheduling data set has been tested. The KBGA was also tested on 10 different moderate size of data set to show its robustness for large sized problems involving flexibility (that offers multiple options) in FMS.     

STRUCTURED REPRESENTATION OF FMS INTEGRATING SI-NETS AND HIGH LEVEL PETRI NETS

In this paper a structured knowledge-based approach to the representation and scheduling of flexible manufactoring systems (FMSs) is described. Our approach is based on a structured conceptual representation (a KL-ONE-like Si-net representation formalism), extended with an instant-based temporal reasoning formalism. Furthermore, the approach integrates a particular extension to high-level Petri nets (PNs), structured timed colored Petri nets (STCPNs), for the modeling and simulation of the FMS. Such a representation scheme allows us to use SI-nets' good properties related to inference (classification and inheritance), which are lacking in PNs, and at the same time provides an extension toward an explicit representation for time. The integration of Si-nets with PNs is necessary because simulation and low-level coordination of FMSs require a procedural approach that is not within the aims of Si-nets. Therefore, procedural and symbolic levels, corresponding to the different hierarchical levels of the representation and control system of the FMS, coexist in the system. Using a qualitative terminology, we may also call them analog and symbolic knowledge. We assume that such a hybrid representation system may be useful, since a procedural representation, integrated within a logic formalism, can increase the expressive power without complicating the notation or the representation itself. The paper describes both the representational aspects and the modeling of the control system of the FMS, focusing on the interaction mechanisms among the different levels of representation. In particular, we show how an STCPN-based model can be automatically derived starting from the symbolic component of the system. A particular FMS case study, regarding a class of problems of resource-constrained multiproject scheduling (where projects are sets of tasks temporally related), is discussed.     

A CONWIP model for FMS control

Production inventory control is one of the most important aspects of a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) design. CONstant Work In Process (CONWIP), which is a hybrid of push-and-pull type systems, offers an alternative to effective utilization of the expensive FMS equipment while still meeting customer requirements. In the selection of an FMS control method, material handling often becomes one of the capacity constraints which forms the basis of various research interests. In this paper, a structure-based model for a CONWIP-controlled FMS is proposed, and within it, the node type characteristics concept is used to describe the constraints in FMS. Furthermore, simulation is used to determine the card number based on the structure-based model. The simulation results demonstrate that the model is suitable for the design and operation of FMS. The model can be used as a manufacturing execution system of enterprise resources planning. An architecture for this integrated design based on Internet/Intranet systems is also proposed.     

基于SHLPN的FMS建模及其分析技术的研究

FMS是一种结构复杂、投入巨大的系统,利用Petri网在建模方面的图形化、数学化特性可以准确地分析FMS系统的性能。本文结合一个柔性制造系统的具体实例,通过随机高级Petri网进行建模,利用随机高级Petri与随机马尔可夫链的同构关系及成熟的马尔可夫链理论,分析了FMS的多项性能指标。     

基于Petri网的柔性制造系统作业调度研究与实现

选择面向对象的有色Petri网对FMS进行建模,研究FMS调度控制问题.本文针对柔性制造系统的特点,采用面向对象的着色Petri网建立了由工件、机床、运送和仓贮对象等组成的模型.模型是一个包括加工系统、物流系统、管理系统在内的一个完整的FMS模型.该模型由于采用了面向对象技术,具有可移植性、可扩展性的特点,并且易于用软件去实现,本文使用"映射"法,把库所映射为软件数据、变迁映射为程序函数和方法、子系统映射为软件系统基本类,从而把FMS Petri网模型转化为FMS控制管理软件程序.本文采用简易的工艺文件数据,对FMS控制管理软件运行进行了测试.通过对测试结果的分析,验证了本文所建立的FMS物流系统模型和设计的FMS柔性生产线控制管理软件的正确性和有效性.     

柔性制造系统中的信息采集系统研究

为了有效地控制和管理柔性制造系统（ＦＭＳ）,制造过程信息采集对系统来说显得至关重要。本文从信息采集的角度,讨论了ＦＭＳ底层设备运行的功能模型,提出了以工业控制实时局域网为基础的ＦＭＳ信息采集系统的结构。并对工业控制实时局域网的硬件和软件构成进行了详细的描述。最后以西门子３Ｍ数控系统为实例,介绍了底层设备ＦＭＳ网络通信接口的设计与开发。该数据采集系统在一个实际的ＦＭＳ中使用取得了令人满意的效果。     

基于ARINC429和TCP/IP的FMS仿真通信平台设计与实现

针对目前飞行管理系统(FMS)仿真通信通用性和重构性差的问题,研究了采用ARINCA29总线结合TCP/IP协议构建FMS仿真通信平台的方法,通过定义FMS仿真概念模型并设计数据结构、数据交互函数和平台控制界面,给出了一种满足FMS仿真要求的通信平台的实现方法,最后对通信平台进行性能测试,验证了平台具备可靠性和实时性....     

柔性制造系统的负荷分配及路径规划方法

柔性是柔性制造系统（ＦＭＳ）的一个基本优点，但这一基本优点却往往被人们忽视，许多现在运行的ＦＭＳ不是缺乏柔性，就是没能充分利用可获得的柔性来提高生产效率。柔性制造系统的负荷分配和路径规划问题正是这种柔性的一个主要方面，然而，路规划决策却往往被。其中一个主要原因人们仍不能从传统的生产管理概念中解放出来。本文在明确概念区分的基础上，提出了一种柔性制造系统的负荷分配和路径规划的线性规划模型，其主要特点是     

YH—MCS可重构容错多机EMS单元控制系统的设计和实现

随着ＦＭＳ（柔性制造系统）制造单元的日益复杂，ＦＭＳ单元控制系统也从单机系统发展成多机系统。一多机系统具有更强的数据处理能力，更大的灵活性和更高的容错能力。本文介绍一个基于多机的容错ＦＭＳ单元控制系统ＹＨ—ＭＣＳ，详细讨论了它的体系结构，容错和故障定位的特点以及实现技术，并总结了基于多机的单元控制系统的优点。     

基于VAPS的FMS CDU 实时仿真系统开发

基于VAPS建立了飞行管理系统控制显示组件（CDU）实时仿真系统。在满足真实性和可靠性的前提下,给出了基于VAPS的CDU设计方法。建立了一个通用的、基于网络连接的飞行管理系统的CDU模型。在满足实时性要求的前提下,实现了飞机管理系统中控制显示组件的动态图形仿真以及在实时环境中飞行计划的生成。对飞行计划的生成进行了讨论,解决了仿真中的一些关键技术,并实现了在实时运行环境中的故障处理、数据传输及通信功能。为达到一个完整的FMS仿真系统打下了基础。     

Experimental performance evaluation of Profibus-FMS

Examines the performance characteristics of the industrial communications network via an experimental model of a manufacturing automation system. In the study presented in this article, an experimental model of a Profibus-based manufacturing automation system was developed. The experimental model consisted of two robots, two conveyor belts, a PLC, an NC machine, and an operator station. Using the experimental model, this study evaluated the delay characteristics of a message transmitted through the fieldbus message specification (FMS) services. FMS is the application layer protocol of Profibus and Foundation Fieldbus. The message delay was measured at each sublayer of the Profibus protocol stack. In this article, after an overview of progress in industrial communication networks and a brief introduction to Profibus and the FMS, the experimental model of the Profibus-based manufacturing automation system developed in this study is presented, and the FMS service delay characteristics obtained from the experimental model are discussed     

Scheduling Part‐Families Under FMS: To Mix or Not to Mix?

This paper considers the issue of whether to mix part-types in one or several of the families to be produced in a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). For this input control problem in an FMS, we have derived conditions that support the mixing of a part-type, which can share the setup of other part-types, in deterministic environment. The problem is identified as a special economic lot scheduling problem (ELSP), and is formulated as a linear programming problem. Analytical insights are derived by considering the special case with three part-families. The results are illustrated with a numerical example.