Intelligent planning of Grafcet charts

Manufacturing systems are entering a new age in which the demands of a mark et in continuous change impose their conditions on production processes. In this new generation, both the response capability to these demands and a r eliable production process are aspects that are receiving most attention an d study. One of the stages that can most affect these terms of reliability and time response is the development of the control program which drives th e operation of the manufacturing system, although this subject has received little attention in the literature. This work provides a new effort in thi s direction and presents MACHINE, an artificial intelligence planner able t o automatically obtain Grafcet charts for manufacturing systems. (C) 2000 E lsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.