A Shop Floor Controller Class for
Computer Integrated Manufacturing
JEFFREY S. SMITH and SANJAY B. JOSHI
ABSTRACT
Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) has not yet provided
the expected benefits for small to medium volume discrete parts
manufacturing operations. Typically, these systems come in over
budget and yet do not provide the promised flexibility. This
can be directly attributed to the high cost of control software
development for integrated systems. Reusable software has been
proposed as a solution to the high software development and
maintenance costs. One paradigm for reusable software, object
oriented modeling and programming, has emerged as an important
method for specifying, creating, and reusing software modules.
This paper describes an object oriented approach to specifying
and developing shop floor controllers for automated manufacturing
environments. Specifically, a shop floor controller class
hierarchy has been developed based on the behavior of specific
shop floor equipment and is described in this paper. User
experience has shown that software development time can be
significantly reduced through the use of this controller class.
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