Applying an integrated analysis method to develop a shop floor control system

The fundamental concept of computer integrated manufacturing is to integrat e the information flow, material flow and control flow of the whole manufac turing enterprise. One major task, which might be required during the integ ration process, is to model the related enterprise activities. Currently, t he most common method of modelling automatic manufacturing systems is to de scribe the system from organisational, functional, information or process p oints of view. Many tools or methods have been developed to support those m odelling processes. However, most of those methodologies are focused only o n one viewpoint. There is very little connection among various viewpoints. Therefore, gaps might exist among those models which may need extra work to bridge them while implementing the developed model. In this research, an A RIS(TM) based framework to assist shop floor controller development is prop osed. The major merit of using ARIS is that an integrated model containing the organisation, function, information and process entities of the shop fl oor can be achieved. In addition, a set of rules was developed to transfer the logic of this integrated model to the control codes of the controller d uring the implementation stage. The main objective of this framework is to reduce the gaps among various models and hence to shorten the system modell ing and development time.