Department of Industrial Engineering
Texas A&M University
Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
Pennsylvania State University
The goal of MODELWORLD was to create an open system for manufacturing systems analysis that would provide a testbed for manufacturing systems research. This testbed would allow geographically disperse manufacturing systems researchers to use the facility over the Internet to validate and verify their research results. The testbed would also provide an integrating link that would allow collaboration between geographically separated researchers interested in manufacturing systems.
MODELWORLD was intended as a testbed laboratory for manufacturing systems analysis that would be available to geographically dispersed researchers. This facility would be used to validate and verify theoretical manufacturing systems research results in a realistic manufacturing system. Researchers could obtain feedback about the underlying assumptions of their work, the performance of their algorithms in a somewhat realistic environment, and the practicality of their research in industrial situations. The objective of MODELWORLD was to provide several levels of interaction between users and the manufacturing system. These levels range from obtaining information only, to submitting production requests at a master production schedule level, to testing planning and scheduling algorithms, to full control of the manufacturing system. In addition, these services were to be provided over the Internet. The MODELWORLD system currently provides three functional subsystems: a library database of manufacturing related information, a bulletin board service, and a connection to the physical manufacturing system.
The key elements of this research are the creation of a manufacturing system resource model for unambiguously describing manufacturing systems and the development of an information infrastructure to allow users to plug into the system at any desired level of detail. This goal of this NSF funded project was to develop an initial resource model and information infrastructure for building MODELWORLD and testing the concepts on which it is based. These capabilities will be refined as MODELWORLD expands to accommodate the full range of functionality for which it was planned. The three subsystems of MODELWORLD are currently implemented through a World Wide Web server so that anyone with access to the Internet can use these services (connect to URL: http://tamcam.tamu.edu/ tamcam.html and select the Projects menu item). An initial resource model structure has also been created (Wysk et al., 1995). It provides a basis for describing a facility configuration in terms of the resources used and the interactions between these resources. The resource model provides a key link between users and the MODELWORLD system, since users can describe the facility to be analyzed by simply creating a resource model instance. The interaction component of MODELWORLD is the least developed component at this time. One-way interaction is in place through the WWW server. Users can obtain information about the physical flexible manufacturing system, about the shop-floor control system used to operate the FMS, about the parts produced in the FMS, and about other related projects and research efforts that are in progress. Limited two-way interaction is also used through basic forms that allow users to register on the system and submit questions and comments about the system. More sophisticated interaction capabilities, which are still under development, are needed to provide the full functionality envisioned for the MODELWORLD testbed.
The goal of MODELWORLD was to create an open system for manufacturing systems analysis that would provide a testbed for manufacturing systems research. The information providing capabilities of MODELWORLD have been implemented through a World Wide Web server. However, this service primarily allows one-way interaction. Future plans are to continue development of the two-way interaction capabilities planned for MODELWORLD. Once this information infrastructure is in place, we can begin to explore the possibilities of allowing users to interact with the manufacturing system, or perhaps a virtual emulation of it, in order to test their research results. The impact of this capability should be significant for the development of useful manufacturing systems research results.