A shop-floor control architecture for computer-integrated manufacturing

The evolution to computer-integrated manufacture (CIM) has been slower than expected. This can be attributed directly 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 that 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 view 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 systems.