A Shop Floor Control Architecture for

Computer Integrated Manufacturing

Jeffrey S. Smith
Texas A&M University
239A Zachry Engineering Center
College Station, TX 77843-3131

Walter C. Hoberecht and Sanjay B. Joshi
The Pennsylvania State University
207 Hammond Engineering Building
University Park, PA 16802

Abstract
The evolution to CIM has been slower than expected. This can be directly attributed to high software development and maintenance costs and the difficulty in achieving the required levels of integration between systems. These problems are especially evident in the development of the shop floor control system (SFCS). Many researchers have developed "standard" CIM architectures. However, these structures are often verbose, textual descriptions which are ambiguous and lack formality. This makes descriptions based on these architectures unsuitable as a basis for control software development. Furthermore, without a formal language for describing manufacturing systems, it is difficult for researchers to discuss and compare different system configurations. In light of these problems, this paper identifies a formal structure for shop floor control. The formal structure is based on a three-level hierarchical control architecture. The purpose of this structure is to allow manufacturing systems to be described completely and unambiguously. This description can then be used as a basis for control software development, which will simplify the implementation of automated CIM sytstems.

Click here to view the paper on line.
Click here for the full paper in MS Word format.

Keywords: Shop floor control, Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Control architecture, Formal Model