Design and Analysis of Integrated Manufacturing Systems (1988) / Chapter Skim
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Integration and Flexibility of Software for Integrated Manufacturing Systems
Integration and Flexibility of Software for Integrated Manufacturing Systems
Pages 79-91
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From page 79... ...
They are (1) that control software should be written as assemblages of software components, (2)
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From page 80... ...
The discussion will deal with an integrated, mildly nonreductionist approach to one technological aspect of integrated manufacturing; in particular, it is concerned with the design and development of real-time control software for the control of the flow of parts, tools, material, and information in a computer-integrated manufacturing system. The approach is nonreductionist in the sense that major aspects of the problem are confronted simultaneously in a unified manner.
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From page 81... ...
that control software should be written as assemblages of software components, (2) that this writing should be done in a largely common distributed language and associated software environment, (3)
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From page 82... ...
We believe that robots, NC machines, material transport vehicles, and so forth should be incorporated into a manufacturing software system in exactly the same way that our simple stack is that is, through a public interface. The ability to create and use software components is not simply a matter of programming style.
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From page 83... ...
Indeed, larger software systems will largely be assemblages of components, and these assemblages will themselves usually be software components. Separate compilation is important because the vendor can deliver the compiled component together with the source code for the public interface.
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From page 84... ...
Similarly, if a number of cells are assembled into a component factory floor, the user of factory floor will have to interact with only its public interface and will not have direct access to any of the cells. Part of this approach, then, is to use software components as building blocks to create other software components.
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From page 85... ...
This is important because manufacturing software must be in the mainstream if it is to benefit from progress in modern software engineering and if it is to have access to a software components industry. Although Ada satis
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From page 86... ...
To control a manufacturing situation, it must be described and a scheduling algorithm developed. In addition, models are needed as a tool to treat exceptional conditions in an orderly manner and as a foundation for creating generic software components.
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From page 87... ...
Generic Software Components The research approach proposed here is a coordinated blending of software components, a common distributed language, and formal semantic models. Although we believe that this approach alone will have a major impact on software costs and flexibility, there is more that can be done.
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From page 88... ...
From the earlier discussion of a software components industry, one can also imagine buying such generic components. Next, consider a far more ambitious case, one involving a family of factory floor and process plans.
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From page 89... ...
An advantage of treating the factory floor as an assemblage of software components, for which we have formal semantic models, is that simulation is extremely easy. One merely replaces the private internals of lower-level components and leaves the public interfaces and their interconnections unchanged.
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From page 90... ...
Since the purpose was to experiment with software components, their assemblages, and formal models, the controller is quite simple. After each change in the state of the factory floor, the controller explores different future scenarios using the search model, starting from the state contained in the tracking model.
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From page 91... ...
Technical Report RSD-TR-17-86. Robotic Systems Division, Center for Research on Integrated Manufacturing, College of Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
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