PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT OF INTEGRATED MANUFACTURING SYSTEM NETWORKS

Performance management of communication networks is critical for speed , reliability, and flexibility of information exchange between differe nt components, subsystems, and sectors (e.g., factory, engineering des ign, and administration) of production process organizations in the en vironment of Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM). The objective is to improve the efficiency in handling various types of messages, e.g. , control signals, sensor data and production orders, by on-line adjus tment of the parameters of the network protocol. This paper presents c onceptual design, development, and implementation of a performance man agement procedure for CIM applications. The performance management alg orithm is formulated using the concepts of: (i) perturbation analysis of discrete event dynamic systems; (ii) stochastic approximation; and (iii) learning automata. The performance management procedure has been tested via emulation on a network testbed that is based on the Manufa cturing Automation Protocol (MAP).The conceptual design presented in t his paper offers a step forward to bridging the gap between management standards and users' demands for efficient network operations since m ost standards such as ISO and IEEE address only the architecture, serv ices, and interfaces for network management. The proposed concept for performance management can also be used as a general framework to assi st design, operation, and management of flexible manufacturing systems .