DESIGN AN INTELLIGENT MACHINE CENTER - STRATEGY AND PRACTICE

This paper presents an agent-oriented methodology for representation, acquisition, processing of manufacturing knowledge and analysis, model ing of Intelligent Manufacturing System (IMS). Intelligent Manufacturi ng System adopts heterarchical and collaborative control as its inform ation system architecture. The behavior of the entire manufacturing sy stem is collaboratively determined by many interacting subsystems that may have their own independent interests, values, and modes of operat ion. The subsystems are represented as agents. An agent's architecture and task decomposition method are presented. The agent-oriented metho dology is used to analyze and model as an intelligent machine cell. An intelligent machine center is considered as an autonomous module, a r econfigurable and fault tolerant machine tool with self-perception, de cision making and self-process planning ability with cooperation to ot her machines through communication. As a simple prototype, a CORBA (Co mmon Object Request Broker Architecture) based distributed software co ntrol system was developed. Finally, a case study of an intelligent ma chine center detailing a self-perception open controller is presented. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.