DEVELOPING A SHOP-FLOOR SCHEDULING AND CONTROL SOFTWARE FOR AN FMS

This paper is about the development of an operation software for a rea l FMS. The developed FMS software includes several modules: production planning module, shop floor scheduling module, operation control modu le, and manufacturing database module. These software modules, at shop door level, are integrated with a plant management system, which acts as a test-bed to build a computer integrated manufacturing system (CI MS) in the future. This paper shows an improved approach to the recent ly developed distributed scheduling and control scheme. To implement t he scheme, a cell controller structure, protocols for scheduling and c ontrol and decision making procedures are designed. The scheme propose d in this paper is the second version of an operation software that wa s used to run the FMS. The revised software seems to work more efficie ntly and reliably, and the result of this study is currently used for operating the ASRI FMS installed in the Automation and Systems Researc h Institute (ASRI) at Seoul National University. To show the efficienc y of the proposed scheme, a comparison study with other schemes is als o included. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd